Wayfinding is about more than just signs; it’s about creating an intuitive journey that helps people move confidently through spaces. But even the most carefully designed signage systems can fail if they don’t align with how people actually see and process information. That’s where eye-tracking technology, and specifically Verifind at Modulex, is changing the game.

By studying where people look, how long their eyes linger, and what elements they overlook, Verifind provides data-driven insights that go far beyond design intuition. This technology helps us audit and improve existing wayfinding systems, ensuring signage is functional and user-friendly in real environments.

Why Wayfinding Mistakes Happen

Designers often face challenges that can lead to confusing navigation experiences, such as:

• Overloaded signs with too much text or visual clutter.
• Poor placement, where signs aren’t visible at key decision points.
• Competing distractions, like advertisements or architectural features, that pull focus.
• Assumed legibility, where designers believe a message is clear but users struggle to interpret it.

Verifind allows teams to identify and correct those issues in existing signage programs, providing clear data on how users actually engage with installed systems.

How Eye-Tracking Works with Verifind

Verifind uses eye-tracking technology to map exactly where a person’s gaze lands while viewing a sign or navigating an environment. Outputs such as:

• Fixation points (where the eye rests),
• Heatmaps (which areas attract the most attention), and
• Scan paths (the order in which elements are seen)

help us understand how real users interact with wayfinding elements.

This data answers questions like:

Do people notice directional arrows quickly enough?

Are icons more effective than text in high-traffic areas?

Does the hierarchy of information make sense under time pressure?

What Verifind Measures

To move from assumptions to evidence, Verifind evaluates wayfinding performance using three core metrics. Each one focuses on a different part of the experience, so together they give a complete picture of what’s working and what isn’t.

• Signage Attention Score (SAS): Are visitors actually seeing what you’ve designed? Verifind distinguishes between signage that is exposed (within the user’s visual field) and signage that is seen (the user’s gaze fixates on it). By analysing gaze patterns and dwell time, the Signage Attention metric tells you whether visual cues are noticed quickly and reliably, so you’re not just placing signs, you’re capturing attention.
• Visitor Experience & Effort Score (VES): How hard does the wayfinding feel? After the journey, participants complete a brief questionnaire that captures their emotional experience (anxiety, confusion, confidence, stress, frustration, ease) and mental effort (how much thinking it took to interpret signage and make decisions). Both are measured on a 7-point scale to quantify clarity, comfort, and cognitive load in a way that everyday users can relate to.
• Navigation Efficiency Score (NES): How efficiently do people reach their destination? NES compares actual journey time to an ideal time benchmark (a moderator’s normal walking pace for the recommended path, with a ±30-second allowance to account for mobility differences). If people take consistently longer than the ideal, you’ve got friction points to remove.

Why these KPIs matter together: Attention tells you if cues are being noticed; Experience & Effort tells you if they’re easy to interpret; Efficiency tells you if they lead to faster, more confident journeys. Optimise all three, and you will move from “signs that look good” to wayfinding that works.

Turning Insights Into Better Design

With Verifind, designers can connect specific improvements to measurable outcomes on SAS, VES, and NES:

• Simplify messaging by reducing text and emphasising key visuals. If scan paths show detours or re-reads and VES indicates higher mental effort, clarity beats more content.
• Optimise placement so signs appear exactly where users expect them. If signs are exposed but not seen (low SAS), relocate or resize to meet the user’s natural line of sight at decision points.
• Audit existing installations to see how signage performs in real-world conditions, then adjust design and placement based on Verifind’s insights before wider rollout or future upgrades.
• Validate accessibility, ensuring signage works for diverse users under real conditions, not just in a design file, by tracking comprehension (VES) and outcome (NES).

By grounding decisions in actual user behaviour, Verifind ensures wayfinding systems that work in real life, not just on paper.

The Future of Wayfinding is Evidence-Based

As spaces grow more complex, such as airports, hospitals, universities, and smart cities, reliable wayfinding is more essential than ever. With Verifind, organisations can invest in signage with confidence, knowing that measurable data backs it up.

Verifind shifts wayfinding from guesswork to science, ensuring navigable, inclusive, and stress-free environments.