Updated: 28 July 2025 for Release v216
Introducing Wayfinding
Wayfinding is a powerful extension to Peppered's Digital Signage solution, enabling arts and culture venues to guide visitors seamlessly throughout their facilities while integrating real-time event information. This module transforms static directional signage into real-time, informative touch points that enhance the visitor experience.
Our new Wayfinding feature does two main things:
- Used for guiding your audiences through the venue to all halls and services they might be looking for.
- Combined with dynamic event info per hall or space. So visitors don’t only see the hall, but also who’s playing there.
Why Wayfinding?
- Eliminate the confusion and frustration visitors experience navigating complex venue layouts
- Eliminate the need for costly, outdated static signage that requires manual updating
- Centralise directional and event information in one system, reducing management overhead
- Works with a wide variety of hardware as it only needs to load a simple web page in a browser
- Works seamlessly with Peppered Narrowcasting
- Reacts to real-life changes/scenarios, automatically updates based on events
- Enhances the sense of professionalism and modernity of the venue
Wayfinding structure
New Terminology
- Digital signage: The general name of all features for use in and around your venue. This includes Narrowcasting, Wayfinding and Kiosk.
- Wayfinding: A brand new feature to build screens that combines a Wayfinding function with real time event information.
- Screens: The Wayfinding feature let’s you build screens to display on monitors in and around your venue. Each screen contains information specifically designed for the location where it is displayed.
- Pointers: Screens are created by adding multiple items with information about specific locations. These items are called “pointers”.
- Spaces: All Halls with the same main name are grouped in a space. A Space is therefore a collection of all hall variations of the same hall. This grouping makes it easy to set up real time event information by selecting from which Space you want event info to be displayed in any Pointer.
Screens & Pointers
Wayfinding revolves around screens for specific locations in your venue. Our Wayfinding Dashboard module is designed to quickly build these screens to match your specific locations. You can create as many screens as you need, and display them on monitors within your venue.
The screen builder is an intuitive tool which offers a simple set of two types of information you can add and tweak to build each screen:
- Destination pointers: These tell the visitor where they currently are and what events are playing or will play soon at the current location.
- Direction pointers (left or right): These pointers guide your visitors to other destinations to the left or right from where they currently are. Direction pointers can optionally show which events are playing at those destinations.
Events & spaces
Adding event data to a Wayfinding screen revolves around adding Spaces to pointers to tell the pointer to display up to date event info for events in those spaces. The concept of “Spaces” has been specifically created for Wayfinding, although we see other uses for this in the future too.
A Space is a collection of all Halls with the same name, which makes setting up a Wayfinding screen very easy. Most venues with an integrated purchase path will have multiple Halls with the same name but different tier setups or seat plans. By grouping all these Halls in one “Space”, all events that are programmed in all of these Hall variations will be available in a single click.
Wayfinding events
For commercial use, a separate module is available to store Wayfinding events. These are typically commercial events or other events you do not show on your website. These can be conferences, seminars, parties, etc that are organised at your venue. These events can be imported from event planning software and stored in your Wayfinding events module, and will also be linked to Spaces.
Building Wayfinding screens
1. Create a new screen
In your Wayfinding module, select “Add screen”. A new screen form will open.
- Give the screen a Name, for internal use i.e. Main Entrance Screen
- Add a Label to be displayed on top of the screen
- Choose a theme. Multiple themes can be created for you during the design & implementation phase. Think about a general cultural branding, or a commercial branded theme. The layout of a screen is always the same: Destination pointers at the top, direction pointers will be placed underneath, at the left and right side of the screen.
- Click Save. A new button Add a new item will now be available at the bottom of the page to add Pointers
Add Destination pointers
- Select Add item to add a new pointer to your screen
- Add a label for the pointer, this will be shown on the right and is typically the hall name
- Choose Type Destination
For the content of the Destination pointer, you have three options:
- Autofill: Select a source “Space”. The pointer will automatically show today’s events linked to that Space.
- Filter by event type: When also using the Wayfinding Events, you can filter which type of events should be shown i.e. Only Wayfinding Events
- Timing: Choose between next event or all events in a period.
- When you opt for multiple events, the pointer will transition between all future events within the set period (default is 3 hours), including events currently playing, which is great for a general overview of what’s going on.
- When you choose “only next event”, the event will disappear after the start time has passed, and the next event will be selected (if there are any scheduled later today), which is great if you don’t want to show events that already started.
- Hide pointer if there are no events: The label of the pointer will be hidden if no events are available
Events currently playing are only shown when an end time is filled in. Without an end time, events will disappear after the start time has passed.
- Manual: Add content to the pointer manually. Pointer label and the extra manual content will be shown. This is perfect for additional information.
- None: Only the label of the Pointer will be shown.
You can add multiple Destination pointers to your screen. When multiple items are to be shown, a carousel will be used to transition between the items.
You can change the time between transitions in Control panel > Digital signage > Event change rate (seconds)
Add Direction pointers
Adding a Direction Pointer follows a similar process.
- Select Add item to add a new Pointer to your Screen
- Add a Label for the pointer
- Choose Type ‘Left’ or ‘Right’ - which side of the Wayfinding screen you want the content to appear
- Choose a Direction. This will add an icon with an arrow to help fine-tune the direction.
- Additional icons (optional). This can be a toilet pictogram, or any other icon for easy recognition of key destinations. These are grouped by categories in the drop-down menu.
- Add a Walking distance (optional) to inform visitors how far away the destination is in minutes.
For the Content of the direction pointer, you have the same three options:
- Autofill
- Manual
- None
See above for details of these options.
You can add multiple direction pointers to your screen.
Changing the order of pointers
All pointers can be seen in a list on the main screen. In this list it is not possible to order the pointers, as there can be many different pointers, corresponding to different areas of the screen. To order pointers within their own section, use the filter button to only show all pointers of the same type. Within this filter you can drag & drop pointers.
Preview and implementation on screens
When you are done building your screen, use the View link at the top of the page to admire your work.
Each Screen is published on a unique URL for stand-alone use on any device with a monitor and web browser, or to embed inside a Narrowcasting iFrame slide.
- All screen URLs are available on www.yourdomain.com/wayfinding
- Every individual screen has a unique ID, like www.yourdomain.com/wayfinding/1
About Icons
The Wayfinding application comes with a default set of Icons for directions and other uses. These can be managed in the Icons module. Icons can be replaced for different looking icons, organised in different groups, and new icons can be added.
- Create groups in the Icons categories module, and use these to organise your icons.
- Icons without a group are the default icons that are available in the Direction drop down of Pointers.
- Icons within a group are presented within their groups in the Additional icons drop-down box
Technical Requirements
Screens: for every screen, you will need a computer with an internet connection and web browser.
Display configuration: this can be a vertical or horizontal display and works best on a 16:9 ratio, but will support other ratios.
There is no maximum of screens or displays, this is up to you.
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