How are you finding your way today? Improving the guest experience at San Francisco Airport
As a part of a five year endeavor of building the new Terminal 1 at San Francisco Airport, planners held a strategic goal of providing a world class experience for all guests. Our aim as designers was to help guests calmly and confidently navigate this complex environment.
Pop-up tactical user testing
Our process was filled with user testing and understanding guest needs and concerns.
I often was in charge of performing intercepts with guests to check understanding around color, language and layout, as well as sign placement.
Interacting with guests and interviewing with intent to iterate the products was one of my favorite parts of this work.
Intercepting busy travelers
User testing conversation guide
Study of pedestrian flow patterns
In order to design and clarify a complex space like an airport, in addition to intercepts, we studied pathways and behaviors of the guests. The below represents 1 hour, one line per person. This will inform rationale around placement of signage.
After traffic studies, we plan signage placement
We took the airport piece by piece, that is, environment by environment and worked to understand what guests in each space needed. The below is an example of studying an AirTrain platform, and all planned sign types.
Prototype testing
Once the signage plan was in place, if the location was new or the product was new (which was often the case), we built actual prototypes at scale and tested placement and information with guests.
Materials and graphic standards
Once prototypes and testing were complete, we codified our work into a set of graphic and material standards.
I was in charge of completing the standard guidance around material selection, sample page here for an illuminated panel sign type
Gate renumbering
A major activity in this project was to renumber gates at the airport from a mix of alpha or numeric into a logical and consistent alphanumeric system. The change was implemented overnight, without any stop in flight operations.
I was involved by
planning the gate numbers to be painted on the airfield. Sample plan page shown here.
Rollout
As of 2020, new wayfinding has been rolled out in the recently opened Harvey Milk Terminal 1, and is being implemented throughout the airport in logical steps as construction allows.
Client: San Francisco Airport, on the City ID consulting team, November 2016 to April 2020
Industry: Airport wayfinding/environmental design
Impact: 47 million passengers visit SFO annually (2023), $55 million dollar project
Press: Used to SFO’s gate numbers? They’re about to change (SF Chronicle, 2019)
Skills used: Graphic design, in person research, cartography design
