The Security Guard and the Restroom Sign

A visitor walks up to a security guard in an exhibition and asks:

“Where’s the restroom?”

The guard points.

Directly above the guard is a huge sign that says:

RESTROOMS →

This is hilarious (except maybe to the security guard). Yet it happens all the time.

And our conclusion is often that our visitors don’t read signs, or that our signs failed.

But that’s usually not quite true.

Reading a sign requires many little cognitive steps: noticing that you need wayfinding information, searching the room for it, finding the right sign, interpreting the words and arrow, then deciding whether you understood it correctly.

Asking a person is just easier.

“Restroom?”

Done.

That hapless human standing there takes on all those steps for you: the searching, the interpreting, the confirming.

That doesn’t mean the sign failed. It just means that people are part of your wayfinding system too.

Of course they are. Visitors use signs, maps, architecture — and other visitors, and staff. They tend to choose whichever source requires the least effort at that particular moment.

So we shouldn’t stop improving our signs.

But we should train our staff to expect questions. And we should also notice where the same questions keep happening.

Because sometimes that tells you the signage needs work.

And sometimes it just tells you there’s a security guard standing underneath it.

Here’s the thing:

Visitors don’t always use the information source you want them to.

They use the easiest one.

Warmly,
Jonathan

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Wayfinding. The strategies, systems, and signage that help museum visitors navigate spaces, locate galleries, and find amenities. Wayfinding is not a synonym for signage; signs are one component of wayfinding.