Successful wayfinding (self-guiding) is hard enough on a single floor plate, but even more difficult when you add one or more floors to the route. Vertical movement is not as ‘built in’ to our evolutionary wayfinding skills as is getting around on the ground plane. 
It is necessary to reestablish your orientation after mounting a stairway or exiting an elevator – the sense of where you are and which way you are pointing is often gone. Therefore, institutions like museums, multi-floor retail centers and hospitals have innately difficult wayfinding challenges. One good approach is to focus all wayfinding around stairs and elevators – make these intense spaces sort of information zones with maps and clear signage.
