Updating wayfinding literature and teaching methodology

The introduction of a theoretical course on wayfinding, offered for the first time to secondyear interior design students at the Università Iuav di Venezia, was the starting point for reflecting on the methodology of teaching wayfinding design. By the structuring of the course, it emerged that the disciplinary bibliographical apparatus, although foundational, is meager and dated, where the most recent volume dates back about ten years. This analysis highlighted the need to implement the common bibliography primarily from a contemporary design perspective, thus offering a selection of interdisciplinary theoretical and methodological contributions to build a common background among students. These theoretical and methodological reflections have set off the absence of any disciplinary tool capable of integrating both the load-bearing and historical aspects of the discipline and the knowledge on complementary contemporary design themes, that together can shed light on the many facets of wayfinding. One of the main results of the course is the construction of a glossary of up-to-date wayfinding design, written and designed by the students in a co-partecipative way. In the form of an analog flexible design artifact, it can be used as a teaching tool in future classes and it can be expanded by future students, even in an asynchronous co-creation model.