Student Project: Campus Infoscreen

Universität Hamburg, 2013

Goal

Our goal was to create a concept to optimize interaction with the Campus Screens. We put a lot of work into the development of an informative, interactive and innovative solution. We drew from existing successful approaches and enhanced them with our own ideas, like a new interactive system for the display of information relevant for each student, or using mobile devices for room reservations and including university institutions through a feedback forum. In addition to technical and design hurdles, structural and organizational obstacles had to be conquered.

Motivation

As students at the Universität Hamburg, we hoped that our work relating to the Campus Screens might offer a sustainable long-term concept to put the devices to use in a way that would be broadly appreciated. To that end, we were interested in finding out how our plans would fit into existing organizational structures and what would be needed for a frictionless deployment.

Approach

At the beginning of the project, we came up with an overarching strategy in order to be able to work towards our goal in an organized way, rather than be shackled to a strict predetermined path. We documented our discussions thoroughly, so we would be able to access what was said even after the fact and examine discussed ideas more closely. Many of our decisions were tested for their suitability in a plethora of user tests. These tests provided us with additional numerical data that helped us analyze and optimize our work even more. In order to be able to work from anywhere at any time, we made use of several cloud services, which allowed us to make more progress more quickly. Finally, we discussed with university officials how our ideas for the Campus Screens could be embedded into existing processes.