UTS is more than a campus. Thanks to PAM, it’s prepared for anything. Prepared for change. Prepared for the future.
Here’s how a network of thousands of signs and digital touchpoints, located across more than 20 buildings, are connecting students to what they love.
Over the past decade, the UTS campus has been completely reimagined. First came the campus’ new green heart, Alumni Green, and a dramatic new campus gateway – the new Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology building. One year on, the unmistakable Frank Gehry-designed Dr Chau Chak Wing Building was unveiled, followed by UTS Central in 2019 – an unmissable, light-filled landmark.
Connecting them all is PAM – a cloud-based navigation platform, which removes barriers, bottlenecks and discomfort to help students, staff and visitors to get the most out of campus life.
And it doesn’t stop here. As tertiary education trends evolve, so will the UTS campus. PAM will be there every step of the way to keep students moving to a better future.
In 2015, UTS needed a navigation platform that would help students and staff to navigate its sweeping $1 billion-plus City Campus Masterplan, which entailed 14 newly-built projects across eight locations. Universities are live, constantly evolving environments, so keeping signage up-to-date – in the midst of a major campus revitalisation – is a major challenge.
UTS also wanted to embrace technology to create a connected campus where students love studying, learning and socialising. Our solution needed to accommodate future growth, and elevate UTS’ reputation as a leading university of technology.
UTS commissioned BrandCulture, a specialist design studio, to create a wayfinding ecosystem made up of physical and digital signs heroing PAM’s smart navigation software. PAM was used to design and implement more than 8,000 signs and juggle feedback from project and faculty managers, signage manufacturers and designers.
Next, PAM made the UTS campus ‘smart’ by populating digital screens and kiosks with live maps and dynamic content. Outdated signs, maps and content can be updated in seconds, while buildings are now resilient, adaptive, inclusive and, well, smarter.
PAM also empowers the UTS marketing and events team to promote events and retail venues, while the MyUTS app guides students around campus from the palm of their hands.
“Using PAM saves me a lot of time because I have all the information I need in one system. Because it’s live, I can make changes instantly. I have total control of digital screens and touchpoints, which means I can make sure information is always accurate. I’m confident PAM helps everyone on our campus to get where they need to be.”
-Barbara Cardoso Komel, Assistant Project Manager, UTS
On Orientation Day, PAM was used to create an “O Day playbook” to guide 10,000 new students around a complex network of unique buildings and grounds.
For new students, the first day is critical. By helping students find their way to the right building, the restroom when they need it, or to social events and student services, Smart Campus navigation helps them to adapt to university life from day one. A network of digital interactive directories features events, retailers, and for students and visitors to search for any destination on campus.
New students can now access smart wayfinding maps through their smart phones by using QR codes distributed across campus. PAM provides the events and marketing team with the flexibility to make last-minute changes to O Day events, helping students achieve their goals for the day.
A remarkable 30% of students (2,780 people) engaged with the UTS Smart Navigation system on O-Day. The university needed far fewer staff and volunteers to guide students around, enabling them to spend more time to engage with students. And by utilizing the universities Smart Navigation platform to improve the student experience of this event, printing costs were considerably reduced – a plus for our planet, too.
At UTS, PAM is guiding 46,000 students – including 14,000 international students – around the UTS campus. It connects thousands of signs and digital touchpoints so that students can better understand their environment, and UTS can better understand them.
The billion-dollar redevelopment of UTS’s City Campus is now complete – but the story doesn’t end here. The next decade will bring considerable disruption to higher education, and PAM will continue to help UTS to remain agile and keep evolving.
See how a kiosk helps students find their way to classes, events and retail outlets on campus. Students natively engage with dynamic QR codes to connect their smart phones with the content displayed on the kiosk.
Campus wayfinding and signage systems are large and complex. Here we demonstrate how simple it is for a campus administrator to manage the installation, content testing and approval of new digital signage.
Interactive digital kiosks located in the universities building lobbies help visitors find their way to any kind of destination on campus. See how a Grad Student uses the kiosks to find out what events are on, and immediately access security and emergency services contact details.
