SEGD Chicago Chapter | The Science of Wayfinding by Jonathan Mugmon
Sep 22, 2026How people find their way through the world’s most complex venues. A lecture from Jonathan Mugmon, weeks after his first book releases.
Wayfinding is the rare design discipline you only notice when it fails. A wrong turn, a bottleneck at the concourse, a sign that answers a question nobody asked. When it works, it disappears, and the building takes the credit.
That’s why SEGD Chicago is glad to welcome Jonathan Mugmon, author of The Science of Wayfinding, out August 31 from Routledge. Mugmon has spent his career moving millions of people through the most complex places we build: Olympic parks, Super Bowl stadiums, museums, entire downtowns. His argument is that wayfinding isn’t a signage problem, and it isn’t an aesthetic one. It’s a psychological and emotional process, and the most beautiful system in the world still fails if it ignores how people read space in a crowd, running late, somewhere they’ve never been.
He’s bringing questions like:
- Why do so many polished, award-winning systems still leave people lost, and what separates one that’s legible from one that’s empathetic?
- As venues reach for apps, digital signage, and “smart” buildings, what do those tools really fix, and what do they quietly make worse?
- When you’re moving a crowd of millions, how much of the work is design, and how much is psychology?
He takes our stage three weeks after the book lands. If your work lives where people and place meet, come spend an evening with us.