Over the last couple of weeks, the Online Services Team (the nice bunch of people in ICT who look after – in broad terms – websites that do things) has acquired a shiny new server to muck around with and develop on. For the most part this involves Alex and myself slamming bits of the University together in weird and wonderful ways that nobody has thought of yet and seeing what sticks, what falls apart and what makes people complain. We’re calling the server (and the whole process) Labs.
“But wait!” I hear you cry. “Don’t we already have the Learning Labs?”. The answer is “yes” – we’re not reinventing the wheel here. What we’re doing is looking at new and better ways of building what we should be doing anyway, things like integrated search for the Library, improved room bookings, unified preference systems, improved customer support and sensible listings of the University’s websites (I think the most esoteric thing we’re working on is Touch, which uses RFID to enhance the Digital Signage project. Learning Labs, on the other hand, looks at pushing boundaries in new and interesting ways (as well as hopefully providing a platform for people to develop things which use the data we’re exposing).
Want to see something cool come from ICT? Let me know and we’ll see if it lines up with anything we want to try.