Wayfinding experience forshopping malls.

Users

Everyone who visits the mall. The most common tasks are finding a specific store or a restroom, or browsing stores by category.

My role

Sole designer, working with one developer. An initial concept already existed, so I focused on improving the UX, designing the UI and adapting it for web and Hebrew. I handled the full interaction design, from user flows to final screens.

Challenge

Kiosks are used differently from phones and web apps. They are large, public and used for seconds at a time, by people who have never seen them and have no time to learn. The interface had to stay intuitive across kiosk and web, and work in two languages that read in opposite directions.

Goals

• Create a simple bilingual navigation system that helps visitors quickly find stores and destinations.
• Keep the experience consistent across kiosk and web.
• Measure success by how efficiently people find destinations and interact with the system.

Research

With a two-month timeline, I kept the research focused: I looked at how other shopping malls solve wayfinding and used that to ground the decisions below.

The main insight: most visitors arrive knowing the name of the store they want. Search, not browsing, should be the first thing they see.

Key decisions

1. Search first.

   The welcome screen puts the search prompt front and centre (“May I help you find…”), so a visitor can start immediately with no menu and no learning curve. Categories and store lists stay one step away for those who want to browse.

2. Sized for real use.

   Elements are large and placed within comfortable reach, so the kiosk works for people of different heights and abilities, and stays readable from a standing distance.

3. Routes that start where you stand.

   Every route starts from the kiosk’s own location, so visitors never have to set a starting point. This removes a step and cuts the time to the first useful answer.

4. Take the route with you.

   A QR code lets visitors scan the detailed route and continue on their phone, so they don’t have to memorise it. The companion web app carries the journey from the kiosk into the mall.

Bilingual design and RTL

Hebrew is not a translation of the English screens. Right-to-left layouts change how screens look and how users read them, so the Hebrew screens are designed on their own. I researched how RTL interfaces are typically built and checked the result with a native speaker to make sure it felt right. Language is switched with a dedicated button at the very start of the journey, so people choose their language before anything else.

Solution

The kiosk covers the welcome screen, search, category browsing, store directory, map and step-by-step route detail. The web app mirrors this experience on mobile, so the same journey works on a kiosk and a phone.

Outcome

In two months I delivered the full bilingual design for the kiosk and the companion web app, and handed it to the developer for implementation.