Perhaps you've heard the story that the Seattle Post Intelligencer broke yesterday regarding the Seattle Public Library's Central Branch hiring a professional Wayfinder to reduce the number of people getting lost in the building (1). For a mere $49,000 the Central library has hired Lynne Faulk, of Wayworks on Vashon Island, to strategically place signs around the building so that patrons might more easily locate bathrooms, escalators, and so forth.
If you've never been to the Central branch, let me give you a quick idea of its architecture. The outside of the building is made entirely of glass, and the escalators run through the center of the building like in a department store. If you are walking around on one floor and you're headed toward a window then you are headed away from the escalators. I know this is complicated but after about one-hundred and thirty visits to the library most patrons have the hang of things and are successfully able to navigate this labyrinth of a book-lender.
Evidently Faulk approached library officials last year to suggest that they install some signs because she found herself lost in the building several times. COINCIDENTALLY Faulk just happens to make a living decoding mysteries- architectural and otherwise. Since the dawn of her employment finding ways through the library Faulk has instituted such revolutionary implements as a sign that says ESCALATOR pointing to the escalator on the fifth floor and a sign in the lobby pointing to both restroom locations on that floor.
GENIUS!
Wayworks, Faulk's wayfinding company, states of the project that in the initial planning stages the objective was to create cost-effective and quickly-manufactured signs to provide direction to confused guests of the library (2). And now, only a year-and-a-half and less than fifty-thousand dollars later Faulk anticipates completion of this unprecedented signage project will be complete by 2007!
Now would be a good time to mention that in 2004 the Seattle Public Library system faced budget shortages so severe that it was forced to close several branches for two weeks to reduce operating costs (3). This poses the obvious question: couldn't a library employee, say the facilities manager, have created some signs as part of their regular salary to reduce confusion about the floorplan? Perhaps this person is busy finding his way through the red tape that led to the hiring of a Wayfinder.
When I was working at the student union at Western we hosted several conferences for students and staff of other universities. Budgets were tight- there was no cushion for bringing in Wayfinders or Hot Room Identifiers. We made do somehow. In an effort to make sure conference participants found their programs and other areas of campus we would create signs and post them strategically around the building. I was making $8.00 per hour. With this work experience, when I first learned that a person could call herself a Wayfinder I briefly considered pursuing this occupation myself.
Earlier this year I was a volunteer for the Seattle Library system. I'd have been happy to make signs- colorful even- that said "Escalator," "Restroom," and "Fiction," at no cost to taxpayers. Had I known that the library was shelling out so much dough for Faulk's integrative, interpretive sign system I'd have volunteered to help lift her tremendous burden as an assistant, unpaid Wayfinder. After deep reflection I've come to realize I'm being called to something else: I am a Moronfinder.
The library council members who were duped into hiring a sign-maker at twice a teacher's salary are morons.
People who feel a panic because they cannot walk back to the center of a building to find the escalators are morons.
That's it- Ill give you those ones for free, Central Library. Next time you are about to blow fifty grand on a moronic enterprise that marries public bureaucratic ineptitude with private profiteering give me a call. For a mere $100 per hour I will identify the morons in the situation, weed them out, and leave budget-minded, intelligent decision-makers to solve the problem.
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If youd like to see Faulks revolutionary signs for yourself visit http://wayworks.info
(1)http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/283819_library05.html?from=wtnews
(2)http://wayworks.info/
(3)http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=24863
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