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(i)Beacons f0rRecruitment Events

Claire Gibbons

Senior Web and Content ManagerUniversity of Bradford

@planetclaire

Ben Butchart

Workgroup leader, Software EngineeringEDINA

@bbutchart

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Welcome and intros• Claire Gibbons

• Ben Butchart

• And you?

• Overview of Beacons Technology

• Beacons at Bradford

• Use cases: over to you

• Opportunities and barriers in your institution

• General feedback

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Beacons at Bradford

What we did!

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Bradford’s Beacons

• Background to the project

• What we did: technical and user-experience

• How it worked in practice

• Barriers to overcome

• Data and tracking – issues and DP

• Opportunities and future developments

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Background to the project: teams• Mobile Technology Team

(IT Services)

• Web Team (central Marketing)

• Recruitment Events Team

• Final year student project– Implementing a Bluetooth

beacon system as part of a Smartphone app

• App: About UoB = free!

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Background to the project: aims• To provide context-sensitive information and

messaging to visitors at recruitment events to make their visit more seamless and engaging

• To gather data from visitors about their visit, including locations visited and journeys around the campus taken, to improve future activities (this is anonymous data)

• To showcase the iBeacons and new technologies, our student work and a collaborative approach to using new technologies from colleagues across the University

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Background to the project: pilots• Applicant Visit Day –

March 2015

• Open Day July 2015

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What we did: technical and UX• What beacons should we use

• Where should the beacons go

• How should the beacons be managed

• What data should be tracked

• What content should be pushed

• http://kontakt.io/

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Scenarios• Tracking the beacon-user

interaction

• Pushing an alert message (various types of messages) to the user on beacon interaction

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Beacon locations

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Challenges: technical• Manual set-up

• Interference

• Permanent versus mobile beacons

• Android version

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Beacon dashboard

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Content – logic and creation

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Location recording

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So how does it actually work then?• Beacon > BLE signal > OS > app API > push

message

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Challenges: UX• Content

• Users need the app

• Beacons are stealable

• Data and Data Protection

• Battery life

• Device requirements– iPhone 4s or above or iPad 3 or above– Bluetooth– Wifi/3G connection (internet connection)

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Further developments• Message sequencing and conditioning

• Checking In

• Scavenger Hunts

• Permanent beacons on-campus

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Over to you• Use cases: ideas and

suggestions

• Museum in Antwerp

• Opportunities and barriers in your institution (technical or human)

• Next steps for you

• General feedback

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Feedback• Ideas

• Opportunities

• Challenges

• Barriers

• Your next steps

• General thoughts

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Thanks!

John Fairhall, Stephen Brown, Stefan Mangu

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