An Exploration of

the Graphical User Interface

of the SUNY Oneonta Campus

A study by John Maas (Thomas Sakoulas, Faculty Advisor)

sponsored by the Faculty Research Committee

The project began

with readings on the topics
of signage and wayfinding
which ranged from manuals
freely available from various
government agencies such as
the U.S. Department of Justice
(ADA Standards for Accessible
Design) and USDOT Federal
Highway Administration through
to such books on design as
“Envisioning Information” by
Edward Tufte (Graphics Press
1990). I followed this with a
visual analysis of the campus (also known as wandering around and looking)
which included much direct observation of signs and their placement, and
study of floor plans provided by the college and comparison of prior to current
experience. A short survey was then derived to send to all faculty and staff to
canvas their experiences navigating the campus. With the heartening response
from this survey, I followed up with further observations and interviews of
various parties involved which served to confirm the results. These results point
to the need for a serious redesign of wayfinding means, including signage, on the
SUNY Oneonta Campus.

“A sign’s fundamental purpose is to communicate information. However, putting

the message across emphatically is not enough; it must be attractive and harmonious
with its surroundings. Consideration must be given not only to what a sign says but also
how it says it, its visual appearance and organization, its location, and its relation to
other signs within an institution. Establishing and implementing a coordinated signing
system is a relatively simple, inexpensive but effective means of improving the visual
appearance and functioning of an institution.”

http://www.usace.army.mil/publications/armytm/tm5-803-5/c-10.pdf
i
1.
 The Story Line
Survey
&
Results The germ of the idea for this project
was seeded on a snowy day in March 2001
when I decided to walk from the Fine Arts
building to the admissions office in Alumni
Hall. I had been auditing two computer
Comments arts classes and, having decided to enroll
full-time, needed an application form. On
this walk down the main pedestrian spine
of the campus, I noticed that there were
absolutely no indications as to where I was
Observation going other than the memory in my head
& of the campus map which I had looked at
Suggestion on the web before I ventured out. As of this
writing more than 2 years later, there are
still none.
In September of that year, I was talking
to a member of the University police and
Best asked him how they find a room in an
Practices emergency. He said that although all the
officers know where the buildings are, it is
the commotion usually associated with a
problem that guides them once inside.

1. Have you ever been lost on campus? ....which is not unusual given the
size and complexity of the campus.
51% of respondents had been lost
It is a place to start.

It is really the responses to this

2. Do you still get lost on campus
or do you make a determined effort to
ascertain where it is that you are going if
it is outside of your daily routine?
More than 70% of those who had
answered yes to question 1 answered in the
affirmative to either or both parts of this
question.
second question that point out the need for
improved methods of wayfinding here at
SUCO. Yes, 49% say they have never been
lost so better signage will be lost on them.
It’s for those who find the place confus-
ing at times and especially for those who
are new to the place, a quite considerable
number in any given year. Sensibly, many
of those who had never been lost here
think that the process of finding your way
from place to place could be made easier.

3. Do you feel that process could be For those who filled out the survey
much easier? asserting adamantly that nothing is amiss,
57% answered in the affirmative. allow me to remind you of the adage ‘Real
Men Don’t Use Maps.’
2.
 As part of the research project, we 4. Do you have any particular story
acquired digital files of the floor plans of the about getting lost on campus, for exam-
Fine Arts Building. It did not take very long ple, on your way to your initial employ-
looking at them to discern why the rooms ment interview?
were numbered the way that they were.
From my experience studying architecture
1/8 of respondents had one, obviously
and working for architects, it seemed that
the numbering system of the building
memorable. See example.
was based upon what is known as a finish
schedule list. These are created, usually
by the most junior draftsman, in order
to make lists of any and all materials, etc. “During my first week, I
which will be used in each room. They are would frequently get lost going
completely arbitrary and have no particular
relationship to how the public might use a from my office to the classroom
building. and back to my office - both are
For instance, Room 101 is the stage located in the same building! ”
of the Goodrich Theater while 102 is the
audience. Faculty who have worked here for
years did not know this and while, in this case,
it is not relevant, other aspects of this are.
The person who did the numbering 35 5. Do you give wayfinding directions
years ago seemed to vacillate in how he or to others frequently?
she thought it should be done. Two adjacent
hallways in the south end of the building are 55% of respondents answered yes.
numbered in different ways. One is done in
a counterclockwise fashion, the adjacent in
a zigzag, left-right, fashion. The floor above is
numbered clockwise to #216 on the southwest
corner of the building. If you are looking for “Everyday I make a joke with
#221, it is across the hall from #236 which is at a student or visitor that to get to
the northwest corner close to 100 yards away. the Math dept. (226) you must
As you may surmise from the quotes
in the boxes at right, Fitzelle Hall comes
go down from Room 211 [usually
in for quite a bit of comment, not least numbers increase as you go up ]
because of the way it is numbered. In one half of a floor on a flight of
many instances rooms that are physically stairs that can only be accessed
one above another do not share the second
and third digits of their room designation from the center of the building.
although the halls are numbered in a circular I tell them to think of the movie
fashion. This roundabout numbering goes on ʻBeing John Malkovichʼ.”
in other buildings in odd and various ways.
At this point you may be wondering
what I’m getting at. Do you live on a street or
road that is numbered even on one side, odd
on the other? To give an extreme example, if 6. Do you find that room numbering
you were standing in front of 1 Broadway schemes in the various campus buildings
at Bowling Green in lower Manhattan, why are clear? Are they coherent from one
would 5170 Broadway be across the street? building to another?
But, more poignantly, imagine for a moment
that you are visually impaired. Less than 26% felt that way concerning
I’ll return to this. either question.

3.

7. Do you think that streets and
walkways should have names?
A clear majority - 73.5% - think this is
a good thing.
This question relates to the way
people give or understand directions and
it seems that three quarters of us realize
this. While it is true that all the roads
through and in campus have names,
finding them is not easy. They do not ap-
pear on readily available campus maps.
The only instances of a road naming sign
that I could find are at the bottom of
Ravine Parkway where it leaves West St.
and at the bottom of Bugbee Road where
it intersects East St., both having been
provided by the City of Oneonta and nei-
ther actually on campus.
This past winter I discovered that
the road that runs south from Bugbee
by Fitzelle Hall is called West Dormitory
Drive (or Road). I know that a significant
sum of money was spent renovating it re-
cently so it not having a name sign must
be policy.
This spring I wondered whether an
internet mapping service such as Map-
Quest would be useful. While trying to
get any results to come up by typing in
hypothetical addresses on campus, one
of their maps told me that the road that
leads from Bugbee down to Lee Hall is
called East Dormitory and the one that
loops behind Morris Hall is South Dor-
mitory. I contacted MapQuest to ask why
I could get no address results in my par-
ticular quest. They got back to me saying
that the campus is not mapped.
My next stop was the University
police where I was lucky enough to run
into an officer who had worked on the
Otsego County 911 mapping project a
number of years ago. He was aware that
the campus was not mapped but did not
know why. He gave me the phone number
of the County 911 coordinator, a Mr. Roy
Althiser, who told me that the county had
offered to map the campus for the univer-
sity when they did their project originally
but got no response.
Their offer still stands and, in the
next two years, should probably be ac-
cepted, By 2005, the FCC 911-Enhanced
regulations will be in full effect. ( See
http://www.fcc.gov/911/enhanced/) These
stipulate that all cellular service provid-
ers and manufacturers enable cell phones
to broadcast their location for emergency
calls. For this to work here, the campus
needs to be mapped.

Buildings having addresses would provide corollary benefits. It would be

easier to give or understand directions. Imagine that the main pedestrian spine
of campus was endowed with a name and that the numbers of the buildings
which were derived from facing either Ravine Parkway (being even. Netzer is
known to Otsego County as 108 Ravine Parkway, the only address they have.)
or West Dormitory Drive (being odd) were also used on this “boulevard”? How
long it would take before most people knew these addresses and used them to
give directions? I imagine this in a broader sense. Consider how much easier it
would be give one of your visitors directions to your office while you are sitting
with them in a downtown café, not forgetting to tell them to stop at 108 Ravine
(where, as of the time of this writing, there is no sign visible from the street
indicating where...) to get a visitor’s parking pass.

4.
 8. Do you find that the road signs I would guess that if you asked these
on campus are useful? questions about the Interstate Highway System
you would get different answers.
Two thirds found them to be useful
but one third did not. See Best Practices links below.

9. Do you know that these signs

have directional arrows in them?
Did you notice that immediately or
days, weeks, months later?

Nearly 55% of those surveyed are

aware of these arrows though when
they noticed them varies. I failed to
notice for a good 6 months.

This question relates to the placement

and visibility of signs and also to when a
sign is only a name or label. For example,
speaking of Netzer once again, the sign
on its west side is directly in front of the
building but it is next to invisible from the
roadway because it is no higher than the
average car and most of the time, cars are
parked there. This is true of the sign on the
road side of the IRC and at other locations.
When you are at the top of the stairs
above the outside of Fitzelle Hall and are
facing south, you can see the edges of four
signs, i.e., they are not directed at you. They
are parallel to the buildings and sidewalks
and are so orientated because of the direc-
tion of travel of the campus’ lawn mowing
machinery. This was so much as admitted
to me by the gentleman in charge of such
things. While I completely concur with the
need to take maintenance costs and utility
into consideration, I would argue in this
case that the signs themselves are in exactly
10. Can you name a building on
campus whose name is built on to it?
Can you name two?
37% of respondents said they
could name one although some of the
answers written down were not correct.
the wrong places. To see the names of the
Hodgdon Instructional Resource Center
(whew!) or the Fine Arts building on the
placards in front of them, you have to pass
their first available door. This pertains
whether approaching from the north or
the south.
One of the definitions of ‘sign’ is an
image that points to something else. This
seems to presuppose the sign being in
advance of the signified. Or, more exactly,
your awareness of it.

5.

11. Do you think that symbolically signifying
where public restrooms are located would be
a proper thing to do?
A resounding 84% YES !!
12. Do you think campus signage should
follow the guidelines laid out in the
Americans with Disabilities Act?
A similarly resounding 84% YES.
Who are the other 16%?
6.
The original reason I decided
to ask this of my captive audience was
that, in the environs of the theater and
art gallery where the general public can
be expected to visit because they are invited,
one can spin in circles looking for a sign
of anything,
The symbol to the left, which I
have imported into the program used to
create this document. is a standard part
of the symbol library of Adobe Illustrator
software.This image is probably as
universal as STOP or EXIT without the
benefit of language. But, gentlemen, if
you are on the third floor of the north
end of the Fine Arts building, room 315 is
where it’s at.
Actually, there is barely a page in the
ADA regulations relating to signage. (http:
//www.usdoj.gov/crt/ada/adastd94.pdf
Section 4.30) The sign pictured at left
fills the bill to a tee though. The pictogram
(straight out of Illustrator) with the word
‘WOMEN’ directly below it, both raised
1/32” above the surface which is matte,
type sizes correct, mounting height and
position as per regs. Braille included, as
you can see from the odd dark spots in
the image.
But there is at one and the same
time too much information and too little.
Somebody thought that ‘226’ (including
Braille) is more important than the other
information being transmitted. (I’m slowly
returning to a discussion of floor plan
numbering schemes.) I’m quite sure that
the ladies on the top floor of Alumni Hall
do not refer to this room as #226 but
someone is bound and determined that
no room should lack for identification,
closets included.
I was standing two steps down from
the landing where this sign appears when
I took this photograph. ADA regulations
have not been updated since 1994 although
they did make mention then of adding stair
warnings. Of course, maybe we do things
for other reasons than government regulations.
 In a broader sense, the concept of
designing for universal access, not just for
those with disabilities, is an aspect of the
signage on the SUCO campus that is sorely
lacking. Let’s take this exercise outside,
shall we? In my travels around campus, I
was unable to find a single sign that was
lit at night except for the digital announce-
ment billboard on the southeast corner of
the Fine Arts building.
On question 7 of the survey, “Do you
think that streets and walkways should have
names?”, one person responded-
It was to get such an answer that
I put the word ‘walkways’ into that question.
(Yes, the survey, like all surveys, has a bias.)
The answer speaks to the in loco parentis role
of the university and to the need to provide
a sense of place if the motto- ‘There is a place
for you here.’ is to have true meaning.
At virtually every intersection of walk-
ways and streets on campus there are lamp-
posts that are used to affix temporary signs (so
grand after a rain) for any number of events.
What could be wrong with permanent signs?

“Along with myself, I have spoken to many students (especially freshmen

and foreign) about how to get on what sidewalk... to get to another
building...at night. Everything seems so different looking...and they get
confused and want to stay in well lit areas. Names on sidewalks would be
so much easier to follow.” The person who wrote this was so adamant
about it that they put three checkmarks in the yes box next to the
question and wrote “Definitely”.

1
New ADA compliant room labels
were installed in the main hallway of the 2
IRC a couple of years ago. I refer to them
3

7
as labels and not signs because they
don’t point to anything. By the time you
can read one, you are practically there.
4
At the entryways to this hall,
there are no directories, no indicators,
5
as to how to go directly to the room one
wants. In a hallway with such a ceiling
6
height, one might think that the simple 7
8
addition of large single digits enveloped
by no other information, projecting
from high up the walls above the doors of
each lecture hall would suffice for those 9
of us lucky enough to have the gift of
sight. In the proper light, a number can 0
be quite elegant.

7.
 I created the graphic below to show a
simple way of portraying the layout of Fitzelle
which might ease the confusion many people
have with the building. It can readily be made
more sophisticated but in its initial sketch
form, I think it works to make some sense out
of a rather convoluted layout and any feed-
back would be appreciated.
It highlights a number of issues that
I have been discussing, the first being the
room numbering schemes to which the Uni-
versity seems wedded. For this schematic to
work, signifying the different parts of the
building needs to be made plain. As most of
my readers may know, Fitzelle is divided into
a five story faculty office tower on the east and
a three story classroom wing on the west. The
floors of these two structures are aligned only
at the grou nd and are connected by a staircase
which has signs indicating whether one is at an
office or classroom floor. (Floor signs in stair-
wells are rare elsewhere on campus, another
sign of number phobia.) The elevator which
stops at all seven levels makes a nod to this by
indicating C2 and C3 in addition to 1 through 5.
This is very useful but in campus
directories, whether in print or on the web,
all the rooms have only a number. Those work
fine for floors O-4 and O-5 because all the
8.
rooms are on one floor but, for the others,
it would be much simpler to add a C or an O
to the numbers than to, say, clutter up the
schematic with yet more information.
This concept could be extended across
the way to the Fine Arts building. An A and
an M or an N and an S (art & music, north &
south) could be added to numbers there. The
key to good information design is to provide
all that is necessary but nothing more.
I have been told that it is not possible
to change the room numbering schemes. This
is to not think the other thought, one which is
not mine. A professor told me about a university
in Germany, one 3 times as large as SUCO,
which changed its entire numbering system
while including the old numbers. They did this
by using a slightly smaller scale and different
color for these on each sign. One might even see
this as the sign beginning to learn multi-tasking.
Another issue which would make this
drawing more readily understandable to its
viewers is the one of naming the exterior
avenues of circulation of the campus. On the
drawing, the red arrows denote exits and, in
4 out of 5 cases, entrances. The question of
where they go, where they are, if answered,
would greatly enhance ones visual and
spatial orientation to the drawing.
 13. In case of a nuclear attack, do you know
where the fallout shelter is on campus?

24% of respondents said they knew.

If you are wondering, I came across two of

the old signs readily identifiable to anyone out
and about in the 1950’s and ‘60’s. One is on the
SE corner of Chase gym and the other is across
the way on the NW corner of the newly renovated
Human Ecology building. Aside from the fact that
these signs have receded to the level of an eBay
collectable, if one assumes for a moment that
fallout shelters are as important as was once
thought, the response rate to the question
leaves something to be desired.
What I’m actually getting at is that these are
signs for nothing, much like the ones on the doors
of the library which indicate Exit on the outside
and Entrance on the inside. There are signs which
would seem to point to future signs, i.e., find your
way to Lee Hall from the only sign on campus that
points to it. You won’t see another mention of it
until you arrive. Or from the same sign which
points to Lee Hall, go to Alumni Hall, do not pass
Go or the next sign you need that tells you where
to turn. You might, given that it is facing the
opposite direction from your approach to it.

Using this same sign as a generic

example, one has to wonder why this and all
the other signs like it around the campus denote
their lists of buildings out of order. In the old
parts of Tokyo, houses on a street used to be
numbered by the order in which they were
built, a challenge for any postman. If anyone
can explain to me the system of order used
here, I would gladly incorporate it into the
project.

This sign, which

has ample opportunity to
say ‘Lee Hall’ but doesn’t,
suffers from the same fault
as one mentioned earlier.
It is single-faced. What you
see is its west side. The side
which faces those entering campus up Bugbee Road is blank. Finish
Welcome, Bienvenidos, Wilkommen, Bienvenue. But wait! There
is a sign down at the bottom of the hill. No, that one is practically Start
camouflaged.
9.
 A
B
This is an extreme example to highlight
one of the basic tenets of effective sign design
- contrast. This new sign on the main entrance
of the just renovated Human Ecology building
looks to be made of machine cut stainless
steel mounted on a stele of fresh concrete.
The section of color photograph on the left is
not retouched. The hint of blue in the lettering
is probably reflection although it was a cloudy
day. The section is repeated on the right in
gray scale (i.e., the color is removed) and the
two horizontal bars in the middle have the
average gray of the letters on the top and
the average gray of the background on the
bottom. The A and B are the reverse. Very
high design, maybe too high. Of course, this
could improve over time as the concrete ages
gracefully.
Observation:
333333 One day when many people
new to the campus were arriving, I spent a
while observing the activity at the pulloff by
Chase Gym on Ravine Parkway . The only
people who pulled in did so because I was
standing there, not because there is a map and
directory. They all thought it was a bus stop.
One professor told me that in his thirty years
here that spot has been used for busses only
when picking up or discharging sports teams
at Chase or school groups going to the Science
Discovery Center.
Suggestion:
i Any number of arguments could be raised
44444 Indicate to approaching
traffic that it is quite all right to pull in and
look at the map or move the map to somewhere
that is more appropriate.
Many more observations are
10. available to interested parties.
The contrast of this black type on
a white background is 100%. The
sign’s contrast is less than 20%.
See- Effective Color Contrast
Designing for People
with Partial Sight and Color
Deficiencies
P.S. The aforementioned concrete
stele which serves as a mount for the sign
has no structural purpose but does serve
to mask where the handicapped access
ramp resides. Maybe a sign for that is in
the offing.
I could go on with example after example but
only at risk of boring you. Any interested
and dedicated reader who has stayed with
this report so far may conclude that the
graphical user interface of the SUCO campus
could use serious reevaluation. Responses
to the survey seem to indicate that this is
not just my opinion.
On a separate sheet is a list of sources which
discuss all aspects of effective wayfinding
design. One link from the Army Corps of
Engineers that I highly recommend for its
succinctness is quoted at the bottom of page 1.
against doing something about this issue but, as
usual, the real impediment is being able to decide
to make a change for the better.