Quantifying the Effect of Supplementary Floor Signage on Pedestrian Wayfinding in a Complex Teaching Building

Abstract

Wayfinding problems in complex teaching buildings can reduce destination-finding efficiency and increase users’ mental load, especially when many rooms have similar layouts and are distinguished mainly by numbering systems. Signage is commonly used to support indoor wayfinding, but its effectiveness depends on whether the sign design and placement match the spatial layout and users’ interpretation of directional information. Taking the Third Teaching Building at Beijing University of Technology as a case study, this paper investigates classroom-related wayfinding difficulties and evaluates a practical supplementary signage strategy. First, questionnaire surveys were conducted among students and teachers who had entered the building to identify common wayfinding problems and signage-related causes. Then, based on user preferences, supplementary floor signage was designed to provide directional arrows and classroom-related textual information. A field experiment was conducted on a selected route to Room 301, comparing an original signage condition with a mixed-signage condition in which the supplementary floor sign was added while the existing ceiling-mounted signs were retained. The mixed-signage condition reduced the mean wayfinding time from 163.75 s to 133.80 s, corresponding to an 18.29% reduction. Post-experiment responses also indicated fewer hesitation- or detour-related difficulties under the mixed-signage condition. These findings suggest that supplementary floor signage placed at confusing decision points can be a feasible and low-cost retrofit measure for improving classroom wayfinding in complex teaching buildings.

1. Introduction

Wayfinding is the process of moving through space to reach a spatial destination by using the sensory cues from the external environment [1,2]. In complex buildings, people can easily become disoriented, and wayfinding can be difficult [3]. The difficulties arise from a combination of information overload and an inherently poor sense of direction in some individuals [2]. The challenge in wayfinding grows if similar designs exist and cognitive cues for orientation are limited. Teaching buildings on campuses are among the most active and highly utilized educational facilities. In complex teaching buildings, a large number of classrooms with similar layouts can make finding a particular classroom difficult [4,5]. These buildings are used daily by teachers, students, non-teaching staff, and visitors, many of whom need to reach their destinations on time. Wayfinding problems can undermine the operational efficiency of teaching buildings, increase users’ mental load, and affect evacuation-related preparedness in emergency contexts. Visitors can easily have the impression of a confusing and unfriendly campus. This leads to the necessity to address and reduce the wayfinding problems in complex teaching buildings.

Using signage to alleviate wayfinding problems in complex buildings is widely recognized [6]. Signage represents a vital form of environmental communication that enhances spatial legibility. It is used to alleviate the chronic wayfinding problems in complex buildings and is treated as a compensation for the complex floor plan layouts. People tend to use signage for wayfinding, especially when they enter a building for the first time [7]. A common type of indoor guidance signage is the ceiling-mounted or suspended sign, which is also known as vertical guidance signage. Most existing studies are conducted under this signage setting. According to Vilar et al. (2015), environmental variables were able to help wayfinding, and pedestrians preferred to follow the wider and brighter paths. In a situation with conflicting information, the majority of users might comply with signage [8]. This indicates both the guiding value of signage and the necessity to ensure signage effectiveness in buildings. Signage design and placement play a significant role in improving wayfinding efficiency. Placing signage at decision points in buildings can improve wayfinding performance [9]. When designing and applying wayfinding strategies in building environments, enough environmental cues have to be provided. It is worth noting that too much information can bring significant mental load to users and reduce wayfinding efficiency. Legibility of signage systems, affected by color, lighting, and numbering schemes, matters to facilitate smooth navigation to the destination [10]. In places like hospitals, where a significant emotional toll on health seekers should not be overlooked, communication design is needed to support wayfinding [11].

Places such as health care facilities, airports, and subways have an obvious service background and high demand for pedestrians to arrive at destinations in shorter times. The corresponding wayfinding problems have attracted more attention. Greenroyd et al. (2018) developed a tool to aid signage placementthrough a spatial design, in which signage was placed where the natural path was likely to deviate from the ideal path through a spatial design to keep patients and visitors on the ideal path [12]. The possible deviation points were generated by analyzing multiple routes through a spatial design. Dubey et al. (2020) determined sign placement based on particle swarm optimization, with user-defined criteria, to maximize the exposure of wayfinding information [13]. By reproducing the patient journey through medical data, Guo and He (2022) used pedestrian flow simulation to identify the vision focus area of patients in the emergency department traffic space [14] and identified directions for signage placement optimization. Li et al. (2022) considered the navigation cue demand and proposed a novel building-information-modeling-based framework for designing navigation sign layout [15]. Their approach maximized the overlap between navigation cues. Automatic signage placement has attracted the attention of researchers. Chen et al. (2024) proposed an indicator-based multiobjective evolutionary algorithm to automatically search for optimal guidance signage placement strategies that had trade-offs between crowd safety and pedestrians’ travel time [16].

Besides signage placement, the legibility of signage affects the wayfinding operation. Noraslı and Çınar (2024) investigated the influence of colors and textures on pedestrian navigation around the circulation areas of healthcare facilities, and found that the orange color and wood-textured surface coverings were easy to remember [17]. In subway space, human visual perception was more comfortable when the hue was orange, yellow, and green [18]. In urban underground spaces, the wayfinding efficiency of signage color design is influenced by noise levels [19]. The color-coded wayfinding system works better in noisier underground environments. In the campus library, color plays an important role in ensuring the navigation success of international students and can make the graphic signage visually appealing [20]. According to the metro-wayfinding sign experiments done by Shi et al. (2020), the legibility of signage was significantly affected by ambient illumination and observation angle [21].

Although vertical guidance signage is very commonly used [15], signage can also be placed on the floor or the wall. Signage placed on the floor is called horizontal guidance signage [22]. Using ground-mounted signage in places like metros is relatively new. In addition, the faces of signage also make a difference in wayfinding operations. For wayfinding evacuation behavior, based on a virtual reality (VR) experiment, Kubota et al. (2024) found that signage on the floor might lead to higher compliance to the indicated direction in the presence of obstacles, while four-faced signage might lead to uncertainty since the viewer might see two faces displaying two different directions on the sign [23]. The influence of horizontal guidance signage on wayfinding is different for daily navigation. According to the VR experiments done by Hu and Xu (2023), the mixed (vertical + horizontal) signage performed best for navigation [22]. This conclusion may also apply to wall-mounted signage if such signage can reduce uncertainty in the wayfinding procedure. Except for the signage design and placement, wayfinding behavior is slightly affected by gender differences instead of age or the level of education [24]. However, demographic factors affect the pedestrian preferences for wayfinding signage [25]. Furthermore, when basic navigational functions are met with signage, pedestrians may prefer signage to have cultural expression and visual appeal [26].

However, most previous studies are based on virtual reality experiments, simulations, or theoretical optimization methods, particularly in healthcare and transportation facilities. Therefore, limited field evidence is available on whether supplementary floor signage can resolve specific directional ambiguities in an operating teaching building while retaining the existing signage system. This gap motivates the present study to develop and evaluate a low-cost, user-centered signage retrofit strategy under real-world conditions.

On the other hand, compared with other complex buildings, the similarity across a considerable number of classrooms makes finding a classroom in a complex teaching building more difficult. Based on one complex teaching building in Beijing University of Technology, this paper investigates the wayfinding problems in complex teaching buildings by questionnaire surveys and proposes a combination signage layout approach to improve wayfinding efficiency by field experiments.

In this study, the signage environment of a complex teaching building is examined from the perspective of indoor spatial legibility and practical building retrofit. The supplementary floor signage is treated as a low-cost measure for clarifying directional information at confusing decision points, while the existing ceiling-mounted signs are retained. The main contributions of this study are threefold. First, it identifies classroom-oriented wayfinding problems in a real complex teaching building. Second, it proposes a user-centered supplementary floor-signage design based on questionnaire results. Third, it quantitatively evaluates the effect of the supplementary floor signage through a field experiment using objective wayfinding time and subjective post-experiment feedback.

The paper is structured as follows: Section 2 describes the study site, existing signage, and wayfinding problems reported by users. Section 3 presents the user-centered design of supplementary signage. Section 4 reports the field experiment, statistical analysis, and results. Section 5 concludes the study and discusses future research directions. To provide an overview of the research process, the graphical research framework is presented in Figure 1.

2. Existing Signage and Wayfinding Problems in the Complex Teaching Building

This section introduces the characteristics of the Third Teaching Building, the existing map and signage, and signage problems based on observation and analysis. In addition, it presents the investigation process and results.

2.1. Characteristics of the Complex Teaching Building and Existing Signage Problems

The exterior of the Third Teaching Building is shown in Figure 2a. The teaching building has four enclosed corridors and 12 staircases, making each floor have many key decision points caused by four-way, T-shaped, or asymmetrical shape crossings (shown as Figure 2b). As a result, the interior is like a maze. Finding a destination is difficult without environmental cues. The existing floor plans are placed on the wall near the entrance of the staircases. Their places are highlighted with red and yellow rectangles. The yellow ones have classroom numbers (shown in Figure 3) and your position information, while the blue ones are evacuation route maps (shown in Figure 4) without mentioning classroom numbers. It is interesting to notice that two yellow ones are placed perpendicular to the actual orientation of the building, making understanding the corresponding maps difficult. In addition, in the rightmost yellow one, shown in Figure 3, ‘your position’ is given wrong. Based on maps alone, it is quite difficult to accomplish the wayfinding procedure. Pedestrians tend to use signage to navigate.

The signage is mounted on ceilings and placed at limited decision points. On the third floor, signage exists at only three places, highlighted with blue dots in Figure 3. The signs are two-faced. From right to left, the directions on the signs are presented above the floor plan and are connected with the corresponding blue dots with dashed lines, respectively, in Figure 3. From left to right, the corresponding directions on the signs are presented at the bottom. Based on the direction information on the signs and possible pedestrian flow directions, several problems are discovered with the signage system.

The problems are given by taking the third floor as an example, with main problems identified in the existing floor plans and ceiling-mounted signs given in

Table 1. Summary of the existing signage problems in the Third Teaching Building.

Location	Problem Type	Description	Possible Consequence
Wall-mounted floor plans	Orientation error	Two maps are perpendicular to the actual building orientation.	Difficulty matching the map with the space.
Rightmost floor plan	Location error	The marked current location is incorrect.	Incorrect route judgment.
Middle ceiling-mounted sign	Missing or conflicting information	Room 315 is omitted, and directions to Rooms 317–322 conflict.	Hesitation or wrong turns.
Leftmost ceiling-mounted sign	Missing or conflicting information	Rooms 308–315 are omitted, and directions to Rooms 320–322 conflict.	Detours or incomplete guidance.
Signs toward Rooms 301, 315, and 316	Route mismatch	The indicated directions do not match the natural walking paths.	Difficulty understanding the arrows.

. The sign at the middle blue dot point does not have information for room 315, and the two faces give conflicting information to rooms 317 to 322. This may be caused by using a simple reversal of the arrow without checking the actual floor plan. The sign at the leftmost blue dot point does not have information for rooms 308 to 315 and gives conflicting information to rooms 320 to 322. The directions provided by the signage system from left to right have more incorrect or conflicting points. In addition, for rooms 301, 315, and 316, the pointed direction from right to left by the signs has a mismatch with the natural paths of pedestrians in the wayfinding process. All the problems with the signage systems can lead to wayfinding difficulties.

2.2. Wayfinding Difficulties Reported by Users

To gain a deep understanding of the existing wayfinding problems and potential influence factors, an investigation was conducted using an online questionnaire, with the questionnaire questions and answers shown in Appendix A. Before designing the questionnaire, several short conversations were conducted to record pedestrians’ experiences of getting lost in the building and the corresponding reasons. The questionnaire was designed with both closed-ended and open-ended questions to enrich the data. Before the formal investigation, several rounds of pilot surveys were conducted to check the clarity of the statements and the appropriateness of the answer choices.

Main results for this questionnaire survey are shown in

Table 2. Main results of the first questionnaire on wayfinding difficulties and signage problems.

Questionnaire Item/Response	Ratio	Percentage (%)
Overall wayfinding experience among all respondents ($N=37$)
Experienced wayfinding difficulties in the Third Teaching Building	31/37	83.78
Specific difficulties among respondents with wayfinding difficulties ($N=31$)
Being late or missing important events due to signage-related problems	18/31	58.06
Difficulty in finding classrooms	30/31	96.78
Difficulty in finding restrooms	16/31	51.61
Difficulty in finding stairs or elevators	19/31	61.29
More difficulty under low-light or nighttime conditions	26/31	83.87
Main reported causes of wayfinding difficulties ($N=31$)
Signage information was difficult to understand	22/31	70.97
Improper signage placement	18/31	58.06
Unclear signage information	16/31	51.61
Insufficient signage quantity	13/31	41.94
Inaccurate signage content	8/31	25.81
Signs considered helpful to optimize ($N=31$)
Directional signs	27/31	87.10
Floor plans	22/31	70.97
Safety evacuation signs	5/31	16.13

Note: Multiple responses were allowed for the items related to the causes of wayfinding difficulties and the signs considered helpful to optimize.

. A total of 37 valid questionnaires were collected. The respondents included 32 undergraduate students, four graduate students, and one teacher. All respondents had entered the Third Teaching Building. The results show that 31 respondents, accounting for 83.78% of all respondents, had experienced wayfinding difficulties in the building. Among these 31 respondents, classroom searching was the most prominent difficulty: 96.78% had experienced difficulty in finding classrooms, including 25.81% who frequently encountered this problem and 70.97% who occasionally encountered it. Difficulties in finding stairs or elevators and restrooms were also reported by 61.29% and 51.61% of these respondents, respectively. In addition, 58.06% of the respondents with wayfinding difficulties reported that they had been late or had missed important events due to signage-related problems. These results indicate that wayfinding problems in the teaching building are closely related to daily classroom-searching tasks rather than being occasional or marginal issues.

The reported reasons further reveal that the wayfinding difficulties were mainly associated with the quality and placement of signage information. 70.97% of the respondents with wayfinding difficulties reported that the signage information was difficult to understand, followed by improper signage placement (58.06%), unclear signage information (51.61%), and insufficient signage quantity (41.94%). These findings are consistent with our field observations that the existing signage system has incomplete guidance information, ambiguous arrow directions, and insufficient placement at key decision points. In particular, the direction guidance signs were regarded as the most urgent type of signage to be optimized, selected by 87.10% of the respondents with wayfinding difficulties, followed by floor plans (70.97%). Therefore, the necessity of optimizing the directional guidance system is widely acknowledged. To improve wayfinding efficiency, this paper proposes a user-centered approach to design and apply supplementary wayfinding signs in Section 3.

3. User-Centered Sign Design for Wayfinding

This section presents the user-centered design procedure and investigates pedestrians’ preferences for supplementary signs for wayfinding in teaching buildings. Details of the questionnaire items and response distributions are shown in Appendix B. The purpose of the supplementary signage design was to improve the clarity of directional information at key decision points where the existing ceiling-mounted signs were insufficient or ambiguous.

Considering the cost and disruption associated with removing or reinstalling ceiling-mounted signs, mixed-signage was considered as a practical strategy for improving wayfinding efficiency. Both floor-mounted and wall-mounted signage were considered. To support a user-centered design, the questionnaire investigated design details including shape, color, size, and information content. Examples of choices are shown in Figure 5, Figure 6, Figure 7, Figure 8 and Figure 9. In addition, the survey investigated users’ preferences for different types of horizontal guidance signage. Before the formal survey, pilot surveys were conducted to check whether the questionnaire items were clear and whether the design options covered the main features required for supplementary signage design. The design-related questionnaire was distributed to 57 participants. Because one participant had not entered the Third Teaching Building, the responses of the remaining 56 participants were used for analysis. The main results of this questionnaire survey are shown in

Table 3. Main results of the second questionnaire on user-centered signage design.

Questionnaire Item/Response	Ratio	Percentage (%)
Preference for supplementary wall signage
Adding wall signs helps find destinations faster	47/56	83.93
Preferring flat arrow signs on the wall	45/56	80.36
Need for supplementary floor signage
Floor signs are useful or very useful for finding destinations faster	51/56	91.07
Having been confused by arrow signs during wayfinding	49/56	87.50
Adding floor signs helps understand arrow-guided signs	53/56	94.64
Floor or wall signs help better understand existing arrow signs	55/56	98.21
Preferred design of supplementary floor signage
Preferring arrow-shaped floor signs	47/56	83.93
Blue panel with white text and white border	17/47	36.17
Yellow panel with white text and white border	14/47	29.79
Green panel with white text and white border	11/47	23.40
Choosing 40 cm × 60 cm as the floor sign size	31/48	64.58
Preferred information content of supplementary floor signage
Directional arrows	51/56	91.07
Destination names	46/56	82.14
Icons	32/56	57.14
Distance information	19/56	33.93

Note: Some questions were conditional questions; therefore, the denominator differs across several items. Multiple responses were allowed for the item related to the preferred information content of supplementary floor signage.

.

The survey results show that most participants supported the use of supplementary signage in the teaching building. For wall-mounted signs, 83.93% of the participants thought that adding wall signs would help them find their destinations faster, and 80.36% preferred flat arrow signs rather than linear arrow signs. For the color of flat arrow signs on the wall, the main choices were black, orange, blue, and green, accounting for 30%, 24%, 24%, and 16%, respectively.

The results also indicate that supplementary floor signage was strongly supported as a complementary wayfinding measure. In the questionnaire, 91.07% of the participants considered that adding floor signs, such as colored guide lines and arrows, would be useful for finding destinations more quickly. In addition, 87.50% of the participants reported that they had been confused by arrow signs during wayfinding in the Third Teaching Building. The most confusing arrow type was the backward-turn arrow, reported by 60.71% of the participants. Furthermore, 94.64% of the participants believed that adding floor signs could help them understand arrow-guided signs, and 98.21% thought that floor or wall signs could help them better understand the existing arrow signs. These results support the necessity of using supplementary signs to reduce uncertainty caused by the existing directional arrows.

In terms of the detailed design of supplementary floor signage, the majority of the participants, 83.93%, preferred the arrow shape. In terms of color, the top three choices were a blue panel with white text and a white border, a yellow panel with white text and a white border, and a green panel with white text and a white border, which accounted for 36.17%, 29.79%, and 23.40%, respectively. In addition, 64.58% of the participants chose 40 cm × 60 cm as the size of the added sign on the floor. Regarding the information content of floor signs, most participants preferred the inclusion of directional arrows and destination names, accounting for 91.07% and 82.14%, respectively. These findings indicate that the supplementary floor signage should not only provide directional guidance but also explicitly present destination-related information.

Based on the findings, supplementary floor signage was selected for decision points where the existing signs were insufficient or provided conflicting information. The chosen color is a blue panel with white text and a white border, and the size of the sign is 40 cm × 60 cm. The final design also emphasizes the combination of directional arrows and classroom-related textual information. The deployed sign for the following experiment is shown in Figure 10.

4. Field Experiments and Results

4.1. Experiment Settings

According to Figure 3, the signage exists in the upper horizontal corridor, and the best location to arrive at the third floor is the staircase closest to the rightmost blue dot. To validate the proposed user-centered design, the selected test route is from the entrance of the corresponding staircase on the ground floor to room 301. This route was selected because it includes the key decision point where the existing ceiling-mounted signage may cause uncertainty in understanding the direction toward room 301.

Before the experiment, participants were asked whether they had previously visited Room 301 or were familiar with the selected route. Participants completed the task individually and were instructed not to use mobile navigation, ask others for directions, or follow other participants. The two experimental conditions were conducted under comparable daytime lighting conditions, and the organizers recorded departure and arrival times without providing directional assistance.

Two sets of comparative experiments were conducted, with a one-week interval between them. The experiments were conducted during the daytime with sufficient sunlight. One experiment was conducted under the existing signage system, which is regarded as the original signage condition. In the other experiment, one supplementary floor sign was placed at the key decision point to show the direction of room 301, as shown in Figure 10. This condition is regarded as the mixed-signage condition because the supplementary floor signage was used together with the existing ceiling-mounted signage. In total, 40 participants were involved in the experiments, and they were randomly divided into two groups. Each group included 20 participants, comprising 8 males and 12 females. The participants were all students, and their ages ranged from 18 to 25. The post-experiment questionnaires and detailed experimental records are provided in Appendix C, Appendix D and Appendix E.

Two types of evidence were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the supplementary floor signage: objective wayfinding time and subjective post-experiment feedback. The wayfinding time was measured as the interval between departure from the starting point and arrival at the lectern inside room 301. Two experiment organizers stood at the origin and destination to record the corresponding departure and arrival times using screenshots, respectively. After each experiment, participants were required to fill out a post-experiment questionnaire. The questionnaire for the original signage condition focused on whether participants encountered confusion, hesitation, or detours during wayfinding. The questionnaire for the mixed-signage condition further investigated whether the supplementary floor signage was noticed, whether it helped participants choose the walking direction, whether it helped them understand the existing arrow signs, and their satisfaction with the mixed-signage condition. A total of 17 valid post-experiment questionnaires were collected from the original signage group, and 20 valid post-experiment questionnaires were collected from the mixed-signage group.

4.2. Experimental Results and Analysis

Figure 11 compares the distributions of wayfinding time under the original signage condition and the mixed-signage condition. The descriptive statistics and the results of the independent-samples t-test are summarized in

Table 4. Comparison of wayfinding time under the original signage and mixed-signage conditions.

Indicator	Original Signage	Mixed-Signage
Number of participants	20	20
Minimum wayfinding time (s)	124	103
Maximum wayfinding time (s)	245	167
Range of wayfinding time (s)	121	64
Median wayfinding time (s)	168	133
Mean wayfinding time (s)	163.75	133.80
Reduction in median time (s)	–	35
Reduction in mean time (s)	–	29.95
Levene’s test for equality of variances	$p=0.245$
Independent-samples t-test	$t\left(38\right)=4.243$, $p<0.001$

. Under the original signage condition, the wayfinding times ranged from 124 s to 245 s, with a range of 121 s. The median and mean wayfinding times were 168 s and 163.75 s, respectively. Under the mixed-signage condition, the corresponding values were 133 s and 133.80 s, with a smaller range of 64 s. Compared with the original signage condition, the median wayfinding time decreased by 35 s, corresponding to a reduction of 20.83%. The mean wayfinding time was 29.95 s lower under the mixed-signage condition (95% CI [15.66, 44.24] s), representing a reduction of 18.29% and a large standardized effect size (Cohen’s $d=1.34$).

The narrower distribution under the mixed-signage condition suggests reduced variation in wayfinding performance, possibly because the supplementary floor sign decreased hesitation or uncertainty at the decision point. Levene’s test showed no significant violation of the homogeneity-of-variance assumption ($p=0.245$). The independent-samples t-test confirmed that the difference in mean wayfinding time between the two conditions was statistically significant ($t\left(38\right)=4.243$, $p<0.001$). These results provide statistical evidence that the mixed-signage condition improved wayfinding efficiency.

The post-experiment questionnaires were used to further explain how the supplementary floor signage affected the wayfinding process. The full questionnaire items and response distributions are provided in Appendix C and Appendix D. In the original signage group, 58.82% of the respondents reported hesitation during wayfinding. In the mixed-signage group, 20% of the respondents reported detours or hesitation. Although the wording of the two post-experiment questions was not identical, both items reflected decision uncertainty during wayfinding and were therefore used as comparable indicators of hesitation-related wayfinding difficulty. Fisher’s exact test showed that this difference was statistically significant ($p=0.021$), suggesting that the supplementary floor signage may reduce uncertainty during wayfinding, especially at key decision points.

For the hesitation-related indicator, the proportion of participants reporting hesitation or detours decreased from 10/17 under the original signage condition to 4/20 under the mixed-signage condition. Because the two post-experiment items were not worded identically, this comparison should be interpreted as supplementary evidence rather than as a direct causal estimate; nevertheless, it is consistent with the time-based results.

Under the mixed-signage condition, 95% of the participants reported that the supplementary floor signage helped them choose the walking direction, and 85% mainly used both the existing ceiling-mounted signage and the supplementary floor signage during wayfinding. This indicates that the floor signage did not replace the existing signage system but functioned as a supplementary cue to improve the interpretation of the original directional information. In particular, all participants reported that the supplementary floor signage helped them understand the backward-turn arrow, which was identified as a confusing arrow type in the design questionnaire.

The subjective evaluation also supports the acceptability of the mixed-signage design. The mean clarity score of the signage system was 9.10 out of 10, and the mean score for the guidance function was 9.20 out of 10. These results indicate that the supplementary floor signage improved the perceived legibility and usability of the signage system. However, some participants still considered that floor plans should be further improved, suggesting that supplementary floor signage should be regarded as part of a broader signage optimization strategy rather than a complete solution to all wayfinding problems in the teaching building.

4.3. Discussion

The experimental results show that supplementary floor signage at a key decision point can improve the wayfinding experience in the studied teaching building. Under the mixed-signage condition, the mean wayfinding time decreased by 29.95 s, corresponding to a reduction of 18.29%. In addition, the post-experiment responses provided supplementary evidence that hesitation or detour-related difficulties were less frequently reported under the mixed-signage condition. These findings suggest that the supplementary floor signage not only shortened the time required to find the target room but also reduced decision uncertainty at the key decision point. Therefore, the contribution of the supplementary floor signage can be understood as improving both wayfinding efficiency and navigational confidence in a complex teaching building.

The improvement can be explained by the additional directional cue provided at the confusing decision point. The existing ceiling-mounted signage provided basic directional information, but some participants still found the direction toward the target room difficult to interpret. The supplementary floor signage clarified the intended route and made the directional information more visible and easier to understand. Therefore, the mixed-signage strategy improved wayfinding performance without requiring replacement of the existing ceiling-mounted signage.

The post-experiment results further indicate that mixed-signage can be more appropriate than treating floor signage as an isolated guidance element. Most participants in the mixed-signage condition used both the existing ceiling-mounted signage and the supplementary floor signage. This suggests that the floor sign functioned as a compensatory cue that made the existing directional arrow easier to understand. In complex teaching buildings, where removing or reinstalling ceiling-mounted signs may be costly, adding supplementary floor signage at confusing decision points can be a feasible and low-cost improvement strategy.

The questionnaire-based design process is also supported by the additional statistical analysis of the design questionnaire. Chi-square tests indicated that most key design-related items were not significantly associated with gender, including the perceived usefulness of supplementary floor signage, preferred floor-sign shape, preferred arrow design, confusion caused by existing arrow signs, and the perceived role of supplementary floor signage in supporting arrow interpretation. This suggests that the main preference for supplementary floor signage was generally consistent across genders, and the final design could reasonably be determined based on the overall preference distribution of all valid respondents. However, several exploratory items, such as sign size and tactile guidance, showed potential gender-related differences. These findings should not be over-interpreted because multiple comparisons were conducted and the sample size was limited.

This study has several limitations. First, the experiment was conducted in one teaching building, with one selected route and one target room. Therefore, the results cannot be directly generalized to all complex teaching buildings or all types of indoor destinations, as the effectiveness of supplementary floor signage may vary with building layout, spatial scale, and the quality of the existing signage system. Second, the respondents to the questionnaire surveys and the participants in the field experiment were predominantly young students. Although students are the primary users of teaching buildings, this sample may not fully represent users with different ages, mobility levels, spatial-cognitive abilities, and wayfinding experience. Third, the field experiment examined one fixed route to one target room, with one supplementary floor sign placed at one decision point. Although the route involved a vertical transition, only one staircase and one corridor configuration were considered. Fourth, the two experimental conditions involved different participant groups, despite random assignment, and individual differences in spatial ability and familiarity with the building may still have affected the results. Future studies would conduct cross-site comparisons among teaching buildings with different layouts and scales across campuses and cities, and extend the evaluation to other complex building environments and more diverse user groups. They would also examine different room locations, multiple decision points, and multi-floor routes involving stairs or elevators, where vertical transitions and subsequent reorientation may increase cognitive load and affect the interpretation of floor signage. A within-subject or crossover design could be used to better control individual differences. In addition, supplementary floor signage should be evaluated together with improvements to the directional arrows on existing ceiling-mounted signs and floor plans to develop a more systematic wayfinding strategy.

5. Conclusions

Wayfinding in complex teaching buildings can be difficult because of repetitive spatial layouts, similar classroom numbers, and unclear or incomplete directional information. This study examined whether supplementary floor signage could reduce these difficulties without replacing the existing ceiling-mounted signage. The field experiment showed that placing a supplementary floor sign at a confusing decision point reduced the mean wayfinding time by 18.29%. Participants under the mixed-signage condition also reported fewer instances of hesitation or detours. The floor sign therefore appeared to help users understand the existing directional information and make route decisions more easily. The findings suggest that signage improvement in existing teaching buildings does not always require a complete redesign of the signage system. A more practical approach may be to identify locations where users are likely to become confused and provide additional information at these points. This offers a relatively simple and low-cost way to improve wayfinding. Future studies would examine the approach in other building environments, on more complex routes, and with participants who differ in age, mobility, and wayfinding ability.