Wayfinder Apps
Wayfinder apps for campuses and large buildings are becoming a necessity. A well-defined app can help your users with indoor maps, guides to facilities, info about your campus, geofencing tools, and other resources.
You can also gather insights about how your visitors travel through your campus. With geofencing, it can also help to provide you with points of interest that your visitors are noticing. There is also room to combine Wayfinder apps with other technologies like augmented reality.
Software development company Armia recently worked with iScripts to develop a Wayfinder app platform that can create maps and tour apps for campuses and large buildings.
Here we will discuss why Wayfinder is important, what it does, and how it works.
Why Wayfinder?
Your building or campus is meant to at least one of two things: pleasant and functional.
In the case of a museum, for example, the design must be pleasant. Chances are if your building is difficult to navigate it will not ruin a visitor’s day and the may even return in the future. However, if you are able to help visitors navigate your building through a tool like Wayfinder, it will make their trip far more enjoyable. The likelihood that they will visit again and recommend your business to others skyrockets.
In the case of a hospital or a college campus, however, your design must be functional. Whether you’re tr
ying to get to class or the operating room, getting to where you need to be on time in institutions like these is serious business.
Of course, the ideal is for any space to be both pleasant and functional. Far too often, however, designers sacrifice one for the other. On college campuses, the case is often that functionality is sacrificed for pleasantness. Buildings become difficult to find and navigation within buildings becomes difficult.
In hospitals the opposite is often the case as pleasantness is sacrificed for functionality. This means that the interiors of hospitals are nearly identical no matter where you are. These leaves internal navigation aids like signage to be the only option. And how quickly signage moves by in an emergency!
Of course, problems can also arise in the case of older buildings that are gradually expanded to meet the needs of patrons. Buildings can become meandering and confusing. They can also take up space in strange places as they are designed to fit the property. They can become sprawling if the property is large enough to accommodate such growth.
Fortunately, technology has been leading the way to efficient solutions to these problems. As technology becomes increasingly powerful and affordable, making maps of buildings and campuses becomes easier. Designing these maps becomes easier too.
That’s where Wayfinder comes in.
What Is Wayfinder?
Wayfinder is a flexible platform that allows users to create customizable maps of their spaces. These maps can then be used by users to navigate on the map in general. They can also set destination points that they can use to find their way. The app then uses advanced algorithms to predict the most efficient path from the user’s location to the user’s destination. Having an effective mapping app makes it easy for users to navigate a space. It also makes navigating that space more efficient and enjoyable to them.
Geofencing With Wayfinder
One of the most powerful tools that the Wayfinder App offers is geofencing. Geofencing allows you to designate certain areas in your space. When users enter the designated area, they receive a customized notification or action.
The uses for these tools are virtually limitless. Users depend on where you designate the areas and what you tell the app to do when a user enters that area. If you run a store you can set geofences around sales items to let customers know of changing bargains.
If you work for a hospital you can set geofences in hallways to let patients and visitors know when they have entered a new section of the hospital. If you work for a library you can use geofencing to help patrons find different sections.
If you run a college you can use geofences to remind students to turn off their phones in different areas or remind them where smoking is not allowed. If you run a museum you can make exhibits more interactive by having exhibit descriptions appear on visitors’ phones as they approach. The possibilities are endless.
If you really want to get involved in geofencing, you can draw custom borders yourself. This is good for spaces or rooms that are unusual shapes. If you are less technologically inclined, you can set the geofence to radiate out in a circle from the point of interest.
Areas marked off by geofences can also be very small or very large so that you can use them to mark off points in a building or areas of a campus.
Wayfinder And Google Maps
Another powerful tool offered by Wayfinder is available through compatibility with Google Maps. By using Google Maps you can have a quick map of outdoor areas like campuses.
If your campus is large but the buildings are not, as may be the case with open-air museums or strip malls, this may be enough to suit your needs. iScripts Wayfinder works with indoor beacons like Estimote for increased accuracy inside buildings with limited GPS accuracy.
For those with complex buildings that may be on large campuses, such as universities or hospitals, you may need a more powerful solution. Fortunately, Wayfinder has that power. With the Wayfinder app, you can create a map of your building. That map can then be superimposed onto a Google Map of the area.
Users can then see the map of your campus and use the zoom feature on a smartphone or tablet to see maps of individual buildings. Moving in and out of buildings on a campus is as simple as using the zoom feature on most mobile applications and web browsers.
Visit Wayfinder Platform
Before powerful tools like Wayfinder, an establishment was only as useful as its building or the space it occupied. By using the Wayfinder app in your organization, you can overcome spatial or architectural limitations by putting maps of your building or campus in the palms of users’ hands. You can also add information to your visitors and users with iScripts Wayfinder platform. With it, you create your custom Wayfinder app for your campus or building.
For more information, or to demo or check out iScripts Wayfinder.
