If you have ever been to downtown Minneapolis you have certainly noticed the unique feature that could only exist in a Midwestern city averaging 54 inches of yearly snow, with an average high of around 20 degrees in the wintertime.
The Minneapolis skyway system has developed over the years out of necessity. The cold temperatures keep the downtown working population indoors for let’s face it, a good chunk of the year.
Unfortunately these above ground tunnels are organized in a chaotic pattern and contain no standard signage inside the system; partially due to each skyway being owned by one of the buildings it’s connected to. In general, only the people that use the skyway daily know their way around, and in most cases that is only to and from the building they work in to connected buildings.
Some of the buildings have the current skyway map posted, but the map itself has several glaring issues. Purple lines and a dark blue background aren’t a good combo for a way-finding system, coupled with the fact that it is just plain confusing.
What we did at Carticulate was create a theoretical skyway map that uses a proven way-finding system (subway map model) to build a new map for the movers and shakers of the skyway. The map itself operates with a new signage system that would guide users through the system as they moved from building to building, and not as they passed over different streets (the system the current limited signage uses). Each building would act as an individual “stop” along a certain route.
Although this is a theoretical design it is one that uses a system that has been proven for getting people from one place to another without mental stress. Because, who needs that when all you want is to just find the nearest coffee shop?
