360° Campus

When I was a freshman you could always see me carting around my Bible. No, not God's word or Cosmo, but my map of campus. All those weird names like Anschutz or the buildings not visible from Wescoe Beach like Smith left my head spinning. My planner map was my navigator. But with a campus as hilly as ours, a flat map can be quite ambiguous.

Last semester I did a story about the ticket system for the basketball games. I scheduled an interview with Jim Marchioney, but I bluffed when I said I knew where his office was. Everyone knows where the Wagnon Student Athletic Center is located, right? Well I didn't. "Just look for the building near Allen Fieldhouse with the red roof," my partner said. Oh thanks, that helps!

But what if I could go to tv.ku.edu and click on a 360° map of the KU campus? Now that would be handy for not only me, but every student on campus who also may not know where the Spahr Engineering Library or Burt Hall are located.

Anyone can find a map of the KU campus on the ku.edu site - it's semi-3D, but not interactive, visual or even very helpful. It doesn't let me "stroll" down Jayhawk Boulevard online or point out the building I am searching for.

The tv.ku.edu is a resource to our student audience, so we should provide as much useful information as possible. My handy-dandy interactive map would let me pick a location on campus and take a 360° look at the surrounding area, but it would also let me… - "walk" through campus and map out my route to class.
- click on a hall and find out what classes are taught there and what teachers hold offices in the building.
- search for locations, teachers, classes, parking and the map would direct me to the corresponding location - locate where students can park and if they require a permit or paying a meter. - find the hours of operation for libraries, labs and food courts. - "walk" around each building on campus and find a specific room or tour the main wings.

A 360° map is a doable and practical approach at spawning user interaction on the tv.ku.edu site. Students want an easy, reliable and visually appealing way to search for anything, why not make it an interactive map?