Large Scale Experience
UBC Winter Blues Intervention UX
How we leveraged user research and design thinking to address UBC Vancouver’s most famous user pain point.
My Role
UBC ranks as a top academic university, but census data reports low sense of belonging and school pride, metrics that are inversely correlated to academic success, and likeliness to recommend UBC. I was hired as Manager of Campus Experience to work on this problem.
Timeline, 8 Weeks
Brief
There is a significant decrease in outdoor activity and a perceived drop in mood across campus throughout the winter months. Our task was to research and design an intervention that could both address the pain point and contribute to an overall improvement in sense of belonging and campus pride.
C A S E S T U D Y H I G H L I G H T S
User Research
We interviewed 14 students, being especially mindful of leading questions to understand their experience and test our assumptions. Is there actually a drop in mood in winter months?
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Super Users
One of my favourite research strategies is learning from experienced experts. In this context, we considered people and cultures from extremely cold and dark climates. What strategies have they developed to counteract the harsh dark and cold conditions?
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Prototyping
Here is a look at the prototype we created for the project. We used the prototype mockup to pitch to the President of the University to successfully secure approval and overwhelming support for the project.
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Tested as a pilot and approved as a permanent annual installation at UBC Vancouver.
80,000
Walks Across Campus
Improved Each Day
4,000,000
Walks Across Campus
Improved Each Year
“…Congratulations Robert, Adrian and the Campus Experience team. This is exactly the kind of magic our campus needs… Can we make the project even bigger next year?’
- President Santa Ono, University of British Columbia
