We believe good healthcare is holistic. A great doctor’s appointment can be overshadowed by a bad hospital experience, which is why we view good design as an extension of good healthcare. Our wayfinding system helped Cedars-Sinai support its patients by better unifying its sprawling campus through a clear naming and signage strategy — providing patients, families, and medical professionals clarity as they navigate from the parking garage to their appointments for top-notch care.

Because a wayfinding system only works if everyone uses it, our team interviewed leaders across the organization — medical staff, security, administration, groundskeepers — to understand their pain points ahead of designing. We later helped them understand the new changes, reasons behind them, and the importance of adopting the updated naming system. From start to finish, it was a collaborative project where we built consensus by centering people throughout the wayfinding process.

After surveying the hospital leadership, our goal for the strategy became clear: to better unify Cedars-Sinai’s main campus. Our team spent weeks studying the ways people moved between buildings, within them, and navigated onto and off of the grounds. Eventually, we settled on a three-pronged strategy to improve the entire wayfinding experience: the Plaza Pathway program, interior program, and exterior program.

Naming wasn’t intuitive at Cedars-Sinai. Each parking garage had a designated number but was associated with a particular building name, which created a lot of confusion for new visitors. We simplified the nomenclature by renaming the parking garages to that of their attached building, and then updated all signage and maps for consistency. 

After streamlining the overall campus, we focused on interior circulation: how people move vertically and horizontally within the buildings to reach their final destination — whether a specific department, patient room, or amenity space. We revamped the maps and signage then placed them at important decision-making points to give people clearer, more concise directions.