A few of you may have tried booking rooms in the University in the past. If you have, you’ll know it’s a slow process involving a lengthy form and an even lengthier wait whilst somebody decides if you can actually book a room or not.
So, here are a few very early mockups of a brand new, very slick room bookings system which should alleviate those problems. The whole system operates on a different premise to the current one – instead of asking for a specific room (or a room with specific features) and then being booked into one by someone else, you instead begin by specifying the limits of your booking, for example time, approximate location, number of people and so on. The system then finds you rooms which match those criteria, and you can book it there and then.
The whole thing will be in blisteringly fast real time, meaning when you click a book button it’s done. It also allows for us to begin offering an even faster way to find rooms for things like group meetings. Tell us a location and approximate time, we’ll find you a room and book it in one click. Alternatively, text us a place and time and we’ll do the same thing. Or even better, if you need a room straight away, just tell us a place and we’ll find you a room in the next available slot.
This should be creeping its way into some specialist room bookings (like group rooms in the Library and Studios in the LPAC) over the summer, hopefully arriving for all bookings across the whole University some time in the next academic year.