IH02-HAK-SEUNG KIM
From IEOR 170 Spring 2007
How many college buildings or departments can we recognize in such a big Berkeley campus? As an Engineering student, did we recognize that the film department is in Dwinelle hall? Probably not, unless you go on the internet. It seems sad that we could recognize only small portion of our great historical campus building during the four-year undergraduate program.
The problem is that we cannot find any information about the building when we stand in front of the building. Many first visitors confuse to find the right building or department. There is a name of building in front, but it is written with really small characters. Even, it is really hard to recognize which departments are inside of the building. Are we not allowed knowing such information? If we know the information of the many building in such a huge historical campus, we could know more about our school. Also, many visitors from all around the world can easily access to the building with that information.
Here’s the example of bad design that occurs human errors (Durant Hall).
My friend (visitor from Boston) asked to the students several times to find where the East Asian Library is. After the several trials of asking, he found one building. However, he did not sure that he is the right building.
Is this right building?? There are only two doors, but still can’t find name of building.
Ahha.. there it is!!.. he found tiny letter on the top of the door, “Durant Hall” But…is it East Asian Library??? There is no information about that…hmm..let's go in first..
My proposal is about making signboard (computer screen) in front of each building in the campus. The target is both students and visitors. One central computer controls every signboard of the buildings, and it has wireless system to update the information. We can write the name of the building, reason of making the name, brief history, name of department, famous faculty members who won the world-class prizes, etc. Also, it would be great if each department has their unique symbol to show in the signboard.
With the signboard, visitors may easy to find their destination building. Moreover, students can take a short tour to the each building when they get tired from the study. Finally, by the time when we graduate, we could be expert for our school.
