Rumea: A booking service for a vibrant campus
How can we make Umeå University's campus more vibrant?
CHALLENGE
Akademiska Hus, a Swedish Government enterprise that manages Umeå University, wanted to make the campus into a bustling place. The challenge was that in the evenings, the campus was empty of people and activity. This made students and visitors feel unsafe walking through the area. By creating a more welcoming atmosphere, Umeå University could become a more attractive place for students, staff members, and visitors.
PROBLEM
Interviews with students, staff, and visitors on campus showed that the reason the campus was empty in the evenings was because all of the spaces were oriented towards spaces of learning.
Students were unaware that they were able to use campus spaces in the evenings to host activities or to hang out.
PROPOSAL
Rumea is a space-booking system for Umeå University. Students and community members can use Rumea to reserve spaces for events and gatherings throughout the day and evening.
The two main touchpoints are 1) the website and 2) digital labels for every space.
Proposed Design
WEBSITE + DIGITAL LABELS
The two main touchpoints are 1) the website and 2) digital labels for every space. The website has detailed information about each space, like occupancy limits, furnishing, and how to get there. Members can filter the available spaces for what works best for an activity. The digital door labels show the availabilities for a room and allow people to book the space in person.
UNDERSTANDING BUILDING USE
The flip side of the Rumeå eco-system is that Akademiska Hus would get valuable insight into how the community utilizes the spaces available on campus. In the short-term, by understanding how spaces are being used, administrators can make adjustments to the usage of existing spaces. In the long term, they can plan the layout of future buildings and spaces to better fit the community’s needs.
The Process
We used several methods to interview stakeholders, students, staff members, and visitors on campus. In our in-depth interviews, we learned about interviewees' daily routines and had them physically map out their day on campus.
INTERVIEWS
“There’s too much focus on places like auditoriums. We need more places to hangout, meet, and work. ”
We used mobile ethnography and participatory methods to get input from passerbys. Inspired by Candy Chang’s participatory art work, we posted the question “I wish Umea University had…” at multiple locations around campus. We created an Instagram campaign with the hashtag #futureumea to encourage students to share their photos of and their thoughts on their campus.
MOBILE ETHNOGRAPHY
We had multiple co-creation workshops with students and stakeholders. Our sessions focused on how to create a sense of community. The workshops were centered around using LEGOs to visualize and share ideas.
CO-CREATION
Through our research, we found that people had trouble navigating the campus. We also found that while students complained about the lack of spaces, it was not that those spaces don't exist, more that students did not know that these spaces existed. We ideated on solutions using brainstorming techniques like crazy 8's and journey mapping. We decided on the idea of a space-booking service because that would bring more awareness to the spaces that already exist on campus.
IDEATION & JOURNEY-MAPPING
We also discovered that Umeå already had a service for booking! Like most students, we never know of this booking system. We had a few usability testing sessions where we had students try to go through the current system and book a space. The website was challenging to use and gave minimal details about the location of each room.
REFINEMENT & TESTING
