General Hospital Wayfinding System Service Design Framework

Abstract

Traditional general hospital wayfinding systems often fail to fully consider user experience, leading to unclear information transmission and increasing difficulties and anxiety for users’ wayfinding within hospital premises. This situation requires resolution through innovative service design methods. This study aims to propose a new theoretical framework—“the General Hospital Wayfinding System Service Design Framework”, designed to optimize the wayfinding systems of general hospitals and enhance the wayfinding efficiency and experience for the primary user groups (patients and visitors). Grounded in service design theory, this framework especially emphasizes the importance of user touchpoint interactions, ensuring that each touchpoint provides an intuitive and easily understandable navigation experience. Utilizing the Double Diamond model, this research extensively gathered user and environmental data during the discovery phase, and clearly defined design requirements and key touchpoint interactions during the definition phase. The development phase involved constructing the theoretical framework and validating its effectiveness through case studies. The solutions ultimately delivered significantly improved wayfinding efficiency and user satisfaction. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2025.