University of Bath

The brief

In March 2023, the digital team at the University of Bath joined forces with Loomery. With a student population nearing 20,000 the challenge was clear: create a best-in-class student experience.

The ambitious immediate goal was to elevate student satisfaction at Bath with the use of technology. If successful, this app pilot would lay the foundation for further development in streamlining the digital experience across the university.

Project summary

Loomery assembled a cross-functional dream team, featuring a product manager, product designer, and two software engineers, who paired with the University’s product manager to deliver a pilot app for the first term of the 23/24 academic year. The feedback from students has been outstanding.

Project in numbers

83%

Students testing the Alpha said they’d use it at least a few times a week

175+

Students engaged across the project in workshops, interview, surveys and testing

'It was a really positive experience working alongside Loomery on the development of the student app; their constant focus on the user experience and the needs of our students ensured the project development stayed on the right track.'

- Ian Blenkharn, Director of Education and Student Services

First, a trip to campus

The journey began with an immersive campus visit in May, followed by an intensive 4-week discovery phase, employing a dual-track strategy to unearth user pain points and assess technical feasibility.

From interviewing students and asking them open-ended questions about their university life, we were amazed by just how different one student’s experience can be from another, despite what a surface level glance might suggest. All this pointed towards crafting a product with a high level of personalisation, and our working name for the app became 'MyBath’.

Defining a compelling vision

Discovery findings narrowed our initial focus to five key areas for the pilot: news & events; study space booking; campus navigation; sports booking; and digital way finding.

With epics identified, we delved into wireframes and low-fi designs. Adopting Scrum practices that the University could easily latch onto, we operated in two-week sprints, modelling an agile development process that prioritised user feedback in the form of prototype testing (often utilising Maze's Maze’sM handy Figma integration), interviews and surveys. Over 175 students actively contributed to research and testing, and their input truly set the app's direction.

Alongside our pilot app, we designed a future app concept, to act as inspiration and showcase what MyBath could become. The ultimate vision was an app that provided everything a student at Bath might need: “Your life at university, all in one place.”

Tech choices for rapid development

We built the app in Flutter, an open source framework by Google for building beautiful, natively compiled, multi-platform applications from a single codebase. It's powered by Dart, a programming language optimised for fast apps on any platform. It meant we could ship apps for both iOS and Android, written in one language, in a rapid timeframe (read more about why Loomery are Flutter fans and official partners).

To maximise the product's impact, the team sought access to existing live data sources from the University. Where that proved challenging, we came up with creative solutions, such as visiting the University to collect our own data for the campus map. The team gathered hundreds of sets of map coordinates and points of interest, and deployed Strapi, a flexible headless CMS, to populate the app with this data, making future updates simple for non-technical staff members.

The app takes shape

For our pilot phase, MyBath took shape around four key feature areas:
• Latest: a point of discovery for students, where they can find timely, contextual information relevant to them, such as popular events happening nearby
• Campus: a custom interactive map with a sophisticated search logic, navigation capability and space busyness estimates
• Study Space: a simple way to book study spaces around campus, alongside signposting to non-bookable spaces
• Services: a directory of useful links to other University services, primed to capture analytics to highlight resources which are popular with students and therefore good candidates to include within the app over time

Testing the app with students

Over the course of ten sprints, the app came to life. We seized the opportunity in September to recruit student testers during Freshers' Week. These students became the basis for a diary study, which rewarded students for sending us feedback detailing how and why they were using MyBath in their day-to-day life.

The results were outstanding

In the first phase of user testing:
• Students gave the app a 4.4/5 rating on first impression.
• After a 2 week experiment, 100% of participants said they would continue to use the app in the future.
• Of which, 25% said they would use it everyday, and a further 58% said they would use it multiple times per week.
• 100% of participants said they would recommend the app to a friend.

“I was actually blown away by how coherent and connected the app is”
- Claire, 1st year, Biology BSc

Conclusion

Collaboration with students in their first term at university allowed us to refine the user experience, gain confidence in our decisions, and steer the direction for the future MyBath app. Ultimately, the pilot's success has paved the way for a broader rollout, which will enrich the digital lives of the entire student population.

Loomery’s collaboration with the University of Bath showcased a commitment to innovation, user-centric design, and transformative impact. The MyBath app has set the stage for a future at the university where technology not only facilitates the academic experience but acts as a gateway to university life, aligning with the evolving needs of higher education.

“Loomery's expertise has proven to be of immense value to MOO in our journey of discovery, aiding us significantly in advancing our strategy and roadmap and identifying the most important outcomes for our customers. Our collaboration with Loomery has been exceptionally seamless, with them perfectly integrated into our team and working closely with our internal stakeholders. Their ability to help us visualise, test, and validate the desired customer experience has filled us with excitement and confidence for the road ahead. Thank you Loomery!”

— Noha Ghazouani, Director of Product at MOO

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