Improving the campus experience at the University of Toronto through student-led design
With a large commuter student population, U of T needs spaces for students to spend time and feel a sense of home. In partnership with Spaces & Experiences, the Innovation Hub is hosting student-led feedback sessions to inform design decisions for future spaces for commuters. We invite you to share your experiences and help the university design new spaces on campus.
Written by Anchana Kuganesan – Design Research Team Lead Transforming the Instructional Landscape
After joining the design research leadership team at the Innovation Hub, I had the chance to learn more about my colleagues during our team retreat day on August 8th. In the morning we took turns taking the team to different spots on campus that were memorable to us. We shared stories about how these places evoked emotions and memories about our time on campus, and how we are all connected through these feelings. We used design thinking methods to ask one another questions that probe more deeply into each other’s experiences and build empathy and we had great conversations as a team throughout the tour. Not only did this make us pay closer attention to our team members, but it also evoked new ways of thinking when we revisit these spaces on campus in the future.
Written by Betelehem Gulilat, Content Writer
Illustrated by Anna Tram, Digital Storyteller
We are two months into the fall semester. Classes have picked up, we are in the heart of midterm season and students are establishing a routine across their academic, work and social lives. Yet similar to last year, this school year is not quite like the rest. After spending the past year and a half at Zoom University, UofT students are returning to campus with mixed emotions from excitement, frustration, joy, anxiousness, more and everything in between.
Fragments of normalcy can be seen walking through St. George Street, while waiting in line at the bookstore, or finding a seat at the library. But despite this ‘normalcy’, we cannot deny the gaps that endured in pre-pandemic student life as much as the ones emerging post-pandemically. A recent poll conducted by KPMG surveyed more than a thousand Canadian postsecondary students and discovered that 78 percent of students agree the pandemic has “fundamentally changed” their expectations of their higher education experience.
By Anusha Arif, Writer
Students at UofT desire a place to relax, grab a coffee, and sit with friends in an informal setting. According to the National Survey of Student Engagement, 35 % of students at the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education (KPE) want more informal gathering spaces. They are not alone: through surveys and meetings, students at other departments have expressed a similar desire. To meet this need, KPE is working with the Innovation Hub to uncover what draws students to such spaces and to create design principles that will help with the renovation of the Clara Benson Pool Gallery into a Chill Spot for students to relax, connect, and de-stress.
Chill Spots started as one of the five “Big Ideas” from the first year of the Innovation Hub, and they have become an important priority at UofT, as seen from the Provost’s recent call for applications to the Student Space Enhancement Fund. We hope that the insights from this project will be useful for other KPE space projects and Chill Spots designs in the future.
