The newly introduced NSU Spaces app allows students to find rooms that are available for advanced booking or walk-ins. The rooms are located in various on-campus locations that will allow students to meet up, study and collaborate. The app is available on any smartphone app store to download for free.
When downloading the app, the first thing the app asks the user to do is put in their NSU ID and password. The user will then have access to find and book spaces across every NSU campus. The app has four tabs: explore, favorites, bookings and settings. The explore tab allows users to choose which NSU campus they would like to find a space for. When the user selects the campus, it will immediately bring them to a screen that shows the available rooms.
On each available space, it will either say “walk-in” or “bookable.” The “walk-in” feature means that users can utilize the room on a first-come-first-serve basis. However, if it says “bookable,” then users can pick an available date and time to reserve the room. This page will show you the room information, such as the max capacity and room hours for each day of the week. To book a room, the user would choose the date and time desired and then tap “select room.”
Under the “favorites” tab, the spaces that the user selects will be organized for easier access and booking. The “bookings” tab will show the user the spaces that they have booked in the past. The “settings” tab allows the user to make changes to the account and give feedback to the creators of the app.
James Drew, NSU’s director of innovation and information architecture, had a big hand in establishing the app.
“It’s a very fancy way of saying that I handle the design and development [of the app], ” said Drew, referring to his title.
Before designing the app Drew explained that he realized that students needed a way to find and book these spaces.
“We developed NSU Spaces specifically for students to help them find and book a space that specifically focused on study rooms and collaboration. Students face the problem of ‘Well, I have a group, we have to study and we have to practice for a presentation . . . If everybody is talking over us, it’s not going to work, right?’ That’s why we wanted to craft this experience [to assist students who have these issues],” said Drew.
Due to the pandemic, NSU is using the BlendFlex model for classes as of now. However, NSU Spaces is still here for people who want to study in a room on campus while implementing social distancing.
“I still think that this app is good to have regardless of the situation that we are all in. At least people know what rooms are out there and they can decide whether or not they’d want to use it. It’s always an option,” said Drew.
Drew also emphasized the importance of students leaving feedback on the app.
“Our biggest thing is how do we make it better. That’s definitely something that we want to improve consistently. Any feedback that we can get on the app is key,” said Drew.
Students are able to give feedback on the app by going into settings on the app and submitting their feedback there. The NSU Spaces app is currently available for free on the app store and Google Play store across all mobile smartphones under the name NSU Spaces.
