11 Lost and Scared

The Wayfinding Experience

Ok maybe its not frightening but when you're late to a class or need to go to the bathroom and the signage is pointing everywhere but where you need to go... tell me who's nervously scared now?

Our Adobe Max experience in LA left us with more negative wayfinding experiences than positive. First, we landed in LAX. In order to filter out traffic, LAX decided to transfer all ridesharing taxi services to a different lot. Seems fair right? Except without proper navigation to the user where to go once they exit! There are several counts of articles on this.

"Instead of an Uber theoretically waiting at the curb after being summoned from baggage claim, passengers will need to wait five minutes for a bus. It may then take fifteen minutes for the bus to deliver passengers to the LAX-it lot. There, they and their luggage will disembark and re-embark in their taxi or ride share. – Forbes

We stood out there peering into all directions, asked an officer and were on our merry way for a few minutes of walking. Not a huge problem. The rest was not that hard. Ill give it to them. Carrying on now... The Air Bnb cough* cough* the Forbidden Papyrus Apartment Complex.

It took us an hour and half to sort out what seemed like an undercover drug deal at a 7/11 to get the keys to then figure out how to get inside the building discretely–"the way through the back"–posing as residents. A process of 4 keyed entries. Garage that we got locked inside of, fenced off elevator room that took up a few at a time, the elevator doors to open and close, and finally our room. All the while the walls being covered in hard to read papyrus with horrific directions to room numbers and hallways that looked like they came from a horror movie.

Lastly I would like to complain about Adobe Max and its wayfinding experience. I honestly thought they could do better. They had lots of banners that could have been utilized for wayfinding other than aesthetics. Inside the main convention center it wasnt as bad, as large type showed where the Pavilion, Meals, and Main Keynote were. It is when you needed to get to a session/class, especially if it was outside the convention center, where things fell apart even further.

Adobe had people standing with large signs to lead them to 3 theaters outside. At one point, walking towards the cinemark theatre for a session with Andrew Kramer, some people were walking towards the Microsoft Theatre. Periodically the 'sign people' would yell out, the sign is incorrect, if you want to go to Microsoft Theatre it is over here!