About UWL

The University of West London is a public research university in the United Kingdom with campuses in Ealing, Brentford, Uxbridge, Reading and Berkshire. The university has its roots in 1860 when the Lady Byron School was founded, later Ealing College of Higher Education. Currently there are approximately 25,000 students spread across 5 campuses.

The Problem

The challenges faced by the university were:

• The university was originally 1 building, then grew helter and skelter over the last 150 years without a plan for how to get people around as it grew. This made it difficult and time consuming for students to find their way around the campus.
• There was an urgent need to provide a solution for accessibility, as students with mobility challenges were not able to find their way around by themselves.
• In the evening at 22:00, large parts of the campus were closed, but other parts were still open to students. It was very difficult for students to understand which areas they could access.

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“UWL has grown over the last 150 years without a plan to help users find their way. This has made it harder and more time consuming for our students to find their ways around campus. We were in need of a solution to help our students navigate our campuses and the solution also needed to help students with mobility challenges as well. MazeMap was recommended to us and has solved these challenges. We are very happy with the solution provided by MazeMap.”

- Adrian Ellison, CIO, University of West London

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Enabling Students to See Where to Go and How to Get There with One Click

MazeMap was introduced to UWL through an existing partner of UWL and after a short evaluation, University of West London found that MazeMap had a solution that would fit very well with the challenges. UWL decided to go with MazeMap because MazeMap seemed to have the best solution to the problem, including the ability to integrate with the timetabling system, provide a solution for accessibility and integrate with the Wi-Fi deployment from Aruba to enable indoor positioning when the students were indoors.

By using the digital maps from MazeMap, the University of West London were able to offer their students a means of routing from off campus and be directed all the way from bed to class. When a student is looking at the timetable, they can simply press a link to see where to go and get directions for how to get there.

To further assist students on the journey, they can also see their own position on the indoor maps as soon as they step inside one of the campus buildings. This was enabled through an integration with Aruba ALE that returns location information for the user’s device.

The final piece of the solution provided to the University of West London was to make a “24/7” view of their main campus. The purpose was to only show parts of the main campus that were open at any given time. After 22:00 each night, the map automatically changes to “nightview” in the UWL app. In the morning at 08:00, the map returns to “daytime”, so students have the right view of the campus at their fingertips, at the right time.

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“MazeMap was able to set-up the solution in double quick time. They were responsive, proactive and a pleasure to work with. The solution works just as intended and is of great help to our students.”

- Amandeep Kaur, Project Manager IT Services, University of West London

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Outcome

In just four weeks from its initiation, the MazeMap solution was up and running, thanks to the pre-prepared CAD files and the existing Aruba infrastructure, which eliminated the need for additional hardware. This swift implementation was quickly embraced by the student body, with the service garnering over 2,300 users monthly within just three months of launch.