Monthly Archives: November 2009

Everywhere, A Sign

I love signs, and I love signage. Lovely Wife will tell you that, if I can be said to have a photographic “theme” in my travels, it is of signs. And I particularly love wayfinding signs — I do not claim to be an expert on them, by any stretch of the imagination, but I do love me a well-designed, well-executed wayfinding system.

This is a relatively new interest for me. Predictably, it started in hospitals, where I noticed that no one could agree on best practices for indicating where people should go or how to get there. A mishmash of dots, lines, arrows, wall-mounts, hand-written, laser-printed signs (with maps added in for good use) has come to be the accepted standard in a lot of places. Most people find this frustrating, yet when faced with a proper, intelligently conceived wayfinding system, they immediately relax — even though they don’t know why.

It never occurred to me that there would be a whole field of study dedicated to the subject, but of course there is; I first encountered it in Jain Malkin’s Hospital Interior Architecture, a 4.2 pound hardcover monster of a book that can be used to fend off aggressive committee members in meetings who don’t believe in its contents. The content is — well, anyone who works in a hospital should probably at least look through a copy, if only so you can see some of the achingly beautiful designs that are out there (and gnash your teeth in misery at the world around you). Malkin has written a whole host of papers on the subject of wayfinding; I won’t link to them, but I will point you to a paper from the Center for Health Design (warning: a PDF lives at the end of that link), a couple of case studies from Corbin Design, some of which I like better than others, and the most bizarre wayfinding I’ve ever seen in a hospital. This last is the signage for the Katta Public General Hospital, the exterior design of which is really weird in and of itself. This is Japan, after all; what did you expect?

(As an aside, likely the closest example of good hospital wayfinding to local readers is probably Vancouver General Hospital, particularly the Pattison pavilion. Unless they’ve changed something dramatically in the last 3+ years since I spent any time there, I’ve never been lost in the new parts of the hospital. The old parts… well, we’ll leave that for another day. The Vancouver Island hospitals are universally awful in their wayfinding systems, and that’s all I’m going to say about that.)

In the Center for Health Design paper I linked above, Barbara Huelat asks why it is that hospital signage systems suck so badly, while airport ones as a general rule do not. Says Huelat,

Successful airport wayfinding relies on the process called progressive disclosure, which provides only enough information necessary to get the visitor to the next decision-making point. For example, as travelers approach the airport on the highway, airport wayfinding provides them only with information regarding the next exit. Then, once the travelers have exited, the signs provide information concerning parking locations and drop-off areas. Airports do not provide parking information on the highway signs.

Hospitals rarely employ this model, and provide too much information at inappropriate locations. Signs should direct hospital visitors with the same ease as travelers to and through airports. While signs frequently identify hospitals from highways, airport-like signs should continue to direct people after exiting the highway. The progressive disclosure method should direct people to correct buildings, hospital parking and drop-off areas. Once in the buildings, the method should direct wayfinders to the next decision-making intersection. Each sign should offer no more than three possible directional options.

You probably won’t have to spend more than about 30 seconds of brain power thinking about how many wayfinding systems you routinely run into that break most, if not all, of those simple guidelines.

What about those airport signs? Lots of people have the same affectation as I do, and, oh, there’s loads of stuff out there about the design and development of various airport wayfinding systems. This guy argues strongly in favor of following the existing conventions, which the hospital world might be wise to consider adopting. Much work went into the rebranding of Dusseldorf airport, and this is the link that I really wanted to post, a showcase of 20 or so wayfinding systems in airports around the world. Normal people would have just posted the link and left it at that, but for some reason I instead felt compelled to write an 800+ word entry on the subject. Freak!

(Also: I would be remiss if I did not mention the most alienating airport in the world.)

Don't see that every day

METAR CYYJ 210100Z 30006KT 10SM TS FEW025CB SCT036 BKN064 BKN092 03/03 A2952 RERA RMK CB2SC2SC2AC2 SLP996=

And more specifically:

WSCN31 CWEG 210058
SIGMET M1 VALID 210100/210500 CWEG-
WTN 10 NM OF LN /4917N12329W/15 W VANCOUVER – /4825N12256W/15 E
VICTORIA.
BKN LN TS OBSD ON RDR/LTNG DTCTR TOPS 260. LN MOVG NEWD 20 KT.
TS INTSFYG.
END/GFA31/CMAC-W/TSG

I miss thunderstorms, but only from the ground.

(For those of you who don’t speak aviation weather: the first is a METAR, or a current summary of local conditions, that shows a thunderstorm observed at Victoria International with 10 miles of visibility. The second is a SIGMET, a warning of significant weather affecting the safety of flight, describing a line of thunderstorms moving east of Victoria, intensifying as it moves.)

Pixel shock

There were a lot of things that the digital revolution made easier in the photography world. I’ve been taking pictures long enough that I can remember using Polaroid backs to evaluate exposure with studio strobes, and fighting to get the exposure and compensation just right on the Polaroid before changing magazines and doing it all over again for the real shot. The instant feedback of a digital camera is awfully nice to make sure you got what you wanted, though the sluggishness of a lot of early generation DSLRs at processing the files meant that it probably slowed your workflow down. I’ve also noticed that I seem to spend a lot of time reviewing what I just took, rather than looking at the scene again to see if there’s anything else worth taking a picture of. With film you never knew what you got until you came back from the lab, so you’d never spend any time thinking about it; I see way too many people continually evaluating the results of their latest shutter press rather than looking around outside, and I’m just as guilty of this as the next guy.

One thing that digital decidedly did not make easier was picking a new camera. Used to be that you could simply evaluate the camera, particularly a point and shoot, in the context of its lens and how it felt in your hand, and be reasonably assured of getting a reasonable product and good results once you shoved some film in the thing. The limitations were really with your own creativity; I took some staggeringly good pictures with absurdly cheap cameras when I was a kid, and you can still have this kind of fun with something like a Lomo if you’re willing to put up with the crappy lens. (This is how things like the Yashica T4 turned out to be such brilliant deals — great lens + compact form + right film = woo!)

Now, however, it isn’t enough to evaluate the lens and the form factor. You have to have some understanding of noise reduction algorithms and methods. You need to know whether a camera has an anti-aliasing filter (and, indeed, what an anti-aliasing filter is). How does the white balance work? What’s the sensitivity at the various ISO levels (which aren’t really ISO levels at all)? If someone had tried to buy a film camera and had to make decisions about not just the camera and lens but also the film, the lab, the printer, and probably the framer at the time of purchase I think that person probably would have gone nuts. It would have been a frigging miracle if anyone had actually managed to buy anything.

It reminds me a little of trying to buy medium format gear; you have to, before you can even think about lenses or bodies, decide — sometimes with basically no background information — what size you want your originals to be. Of course, there actually is a correct answer here (6×6), but I remember the heat and light that these discussions used to generate on photo.net and rec.photo.* — it was intense. But medium format, like all film photography, could in some senses be saved by film choices; if you got a crummy slow lens you could play around, find the right aperture, park it on a tripod, and get the finest grained film you could find, and generally figure out how to salvage your work. With a digital camera, though, you’re stuck with the same film, the same lab, and the same printer, as well as the actual hardware. Forever. (Well, maybe not: I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out the CHDK project, which is interesting and probably useful if you’re trying to push the limits of what the small-sensor Canons can do.)

And then you get the yahoos for whom cameras are gadgets, and for whom pixel peeping is the end-all, be-all of photographic quality… oh, it’s really irritating. I suppose this is why people use shorthands: “Buy the top-end Canon and don’t worry about it too much.” OK. I did this twice and it worked all right; what are the odds it works the third time, too?

I was on the Internet within minutes…

… registering my disgust throughout the world.

Air Canada: Treat yourself to a little more legroom

Do you find yourself looking for a little extra space when you fly? Well, look no further. When you travel with us, you now have the option of selecting a Preferred seat, which offers more in-flight legroom. Preferred seat selection is available starting at $14 CAD per one-way flight, including connections, from your departure to your destination city, and is complimentary for Super Elite, Elite and Prestige customers travelling on specific fares.

In plain English, Air Canada is now charging for bulkhead and exit row seating. WestJet has been doing this for a while, but they’re offering those seats up for $15 (plus $10 at time of booking). Bulkhead, and the first few rows of economy, used to be selectable only at time of booking for customers with status; now, unless you’re traveling in the right fare category, you can’t book them without paying.

This is really irritating. United does the same thing, calling it Economy Plus, but the difference is that it’s actually worth it — hell is a Y seat on a 757-200, and E+ makes it better. You get ~4″ extra of legroom, which doesn’t sound like a lot but actually turns out to be quite nice. (Lovely Wife and I now have a policy of always, but always, buying the E+ upgrade on UAL flights.) Here, you’re not actually getting anything better — Air Canada is just charging more for the seats that those of us who fly a lot know about as being “premium.” The product isn’t different at all.

What’s most frustrating is what they’re doing with their status passengers. Used to be, as an Air Canada Elite member, I could book basically any seat on the plane; now, unless I’m traveling on a Latitude fare (read: expensive economy) or am willing to pay, I’m out of luck. But, of course, if I’m traveling on a Latitude fare, I might as well use my upgrade certificates, so why would I pay? And there’s nothing to say that passengers who don’t pay for the preferred seating, and who aren’t paying for the priviledge of picking seats at time of booking (read: people traveling on the cheapest of the cheap fares) won’t find themselves in the preferred seats if no one is willing to pay (this happens on UAL from time to time, and the cheap end up in the expensive seats).

In the end, I suspect that I will suck it up and just cope. Like many of the other changes that have come with flying lately I have, mostly, just come to accept that there is little I can do. I can’t threaten to change airlines, so I guess I’m just going to have to whine about it and pay the stupid fees. It’s not all bad; I personally think Air Canada’s Y product is probably the best in North America so it’s not like this is a horrible fate to befall anyone, but I was starting to get used to row 12…

YouTube Wednesday

First:

We’ve all seen the pictures, and we probably all understand on some level exactly how hard this was to accomplish, but check this: real time, showing altitude and airspeed, with the various radio calls (be sure to put it on HD mode and blow it up so you can read the CVR transcript), along with the attitude and position of the plane during the whole flight. Six minutes is a lot less time. My admiration for that flight crew continues to grow by leaps and bounds.

Second is this. It is a collection of movies of dogs welcoming their owners home from Iraq and Afghanistan. Anybody who owns a dog will probably get a little weepy.