Wayfinding challenges in morphologically complex educational buildings

A sign on a door, “Please do not ask for directions; thank you,” captures the paradox of excessive accessibility in campus micro-urban environments. The cognitive cost of many routes remains under-explored. Addressing this gap, we introduce a mixed-methods analysis of the American University in Cairo’s Humanities and Social Sciences (HUSS) buildings. The study triangulates objective visual graph analysis with 15 faculty interviews, 16 student “find-the-location” game trials, and field observation. VGA shows HUSS to be more visually connected than a similarly scaled courtyard-based campus building, yet users report greater disorientation. Experienced users learn to ignore confusing routes, creating efficient mental shortcuts. In contrast, novices are misled by surplus options, leading to longer search times and confirming that excessive accessibility impairs navigation. Team navigation modestly improves performance, underscoring the value of social scaffolding under high choice. By quantifying this tipping point, the study contributes a replicable tool for balancing inclusivity with navigational clarity in a morphologically complex micro-scale urban context.