[przefur]

It's actually refreshing to read about airport that has been properly decorated with signs. Without proper information it can get really messy. This plus the stress that often comes with visiting airports makes it a really tough UX case. I'm glad that this terminal was tested properly, I wish some airports could do the same in following months! Also, worth nothing, “wide enough to open the door and roll in a bag without bumping into anything,” This sounds like an absolute opposite to hostile architecture trend that spawns public places nowadays.

[setgree]

> This sounds like an absolute opposite to hostile architecture trend that spawns public places nowadays.

A lot of that user-hostile design in public space seems aimed at discouraging people from loitering/camping out, especially those who didn't pay an entry fee or buy something. But everybody at an airport bought something to get in, and everyone has a specified departure time, so I think there's less incentive to make people uncomfortable.

"How To with John Wilson" has a bit about user-hostile design in public architecture that changed how I see New York, especially if you consider that some of the city's 'users' are pigeons.

[triggercut]

An unfortunate reality is that wayfinding is usually a late stage item of scope. The norm is that budget attributed to those types of items has been progressively raided over the course of the project to cover for deficiencies and lack of allowances in others - certainly not good practice, but extremely common.

The flawed negotiation is that you "push it to opex", which, as we know, especially in the US, means it is unlikely to happen. So what originally might have been designed is scaled back. But yes, as with this example, there are cases where only minor tuning is needed once something is in place that is hard to simulate before hand (e.g. the audibility of PA announcements).