The uNivUS is at your fingertips

Shui Min Tan, Chief Information Technology Officer, National University of Singapore

We’ve seen how technological disruptions have been exacerbated by recent crises like COVID-19, which caused shifts in the way people live, study, work and communicate. When the pandemic began, it became essential to tackle the following challenges - how would        National University of Singapore (NUS) prevent overcrowding in communal areas, such as canteens and how do we implement contact tracing when students or staff catch COVID-19? In keeping with our (NUS Information Technology’s) values of pursuing innovation and pushing boundaries, uNivUS was born. 

Driven by Innovation

In the beginning, key features centredon being a one-stop digital platform and app and it was aptly named - uNivUS: Pandemic Suite. When TraceTogether-SafeEntry was made mandatory, uNivUS eliminated the need for manned checkpoints as it automated check-ins to buildings based on the connection to NUS Wi-Fi access points. As such, the app can utilize the information to track the occupant density of buildings to prevent overcrowding. Users can also upload their vaccination records, which is mandatory for all staff and students to reduce the risk of transmission within the campus.

As we prepared for the endemic phase of COVID-19, we sought to make uNivUS a one-stop-shop; a unified platform for essential information and services with a personalized user experience. Before uNivUS was born, students had to toggle through the numerous NUS apps for their needs, which was inevitably overwhelming.

What are some key considerations?

Firstly, users' requirements are at the centre of the app design and development. The app must cater for a good user interface (UI) and user experience (UX). 

Secondly, the app must incorporate our business needs, making sure that it supports our operational requirements and future development. Ultimately, the app must cater for integration with NUS key apps and systems and user input remains a top priority.

Thirdly, the app must be sustainable in the long run. Controlling its development, security, maintenance, and updates allows us to customise it for our current and future needs to ensure optimisation and efficiency, which is precisely why uNivUS is our very own homegrown app. We understand that features and functionalities will evolve over time, and they must be kept updated and relevant. For content management, we ensured that it was easy for staff to perform regular updates and maintenance in a timely manner. This is made possible with simple creation and publishing workflow for Department/Unit Administrators of NUS. Naturally, business processes supporting the operations will need to be reviewed and kept relevant to ensure that uNivUS runs efficiently. 

Lastly, the app must be able to support student collaboration and initiatives. We want to create opportunities for students to showcase their skills and talent by developing features and mini-apps that cater to their peers’ needs. One such example is NUSMods which has now become an important part of module registration.

What’s next?

While uNivUS started out as an application for health declaration and useful features like crowd insight and digital ID, it is vitalto keep things rolling.With agile development, there is an incremental roll-out of new features almost every month. For example, the resource tab now holds a wealth of key information specially curated for campus and academic life in NUS. We have successfully implemented the alerts function for students to stay on top of their student life as they receive notifications for upcoming classes and examinations.

Plans are also underway to add a feature for budding developers to use uNivUS with our very own mini-program framework. This framework provides application hosting, common APIs/DataSets, and access to native phone functionalities like GPS, and camera. This comes complete with a developer guide and onboarding processes and opens up the possibility of community-developed mini-apps in the future. Another opportunity that arises is crowdsourcing for ideas where we can analyze the popularity of such mini-apps and scale them up as native features!

Hall of fame

We are very proud of uNivUS and the strides it has made! It was featured in The New York Times and our national newspaper, The Straits Times. The icing on the cake-- we have clinched accolades for the application; the Workplace Safety and Health Award 2022, and the prestigious OpenGov Asia Recognition of Excellence Award.

Additionally, we’ve been given the honour to be a panellist at distinguished events like the Huawei Asia Pacific Digital Innovation Congress 2022 to share on uNivUS.

Teamwork makes the dream work and with the joint effort by the NUS Organisational Excellence Transformation Unit and the folks at NUS IT, the powerful application acts as the digital gateway to uniting NUS individuals and resources. With this app, uNivUS is truly at your fingertips; everything you need is just a tap away.

Information Technology

GPS

Content Management

Agile