About this research…

Opened in April 2017, Bristol Business School and Bristol Law School is a flagship space to attract international and home students, facilitate links with businesses, and provide collaborative spaces for staff to work together.



Stride Treglown (the building architects), ISG (building contractors) and UWE Bristol Business School collaborated on this research project to explore personal, emotional and sensory user experiences of the building through the use of social media and photography.



We wanted to:


1. learn more about user experiences of buildings using visual methods


2. engage a wide variety of people who use the building


For example, the ethos of the building is to be as transparent, collaborative and flexible as possible. How has this impacted on working practices? Is this happening as predicted? Has it been differently understood or experienced by users? What can we learn from this project that can help us develop and design buildings in the future.

How we did this:


Between February 2018 and February 2019 we asked all our staff, students, visitors and anyone coming into the building to get involved!



We asked them to post a photo to Instagram with the tag #myUWEBBSview and to tell us in the caption how they used the building or how they felt about the building. Participants told us why they took the picture and what it meant to them.



If people didn’t want to use social media they could email a photograph they had taken, telling us how they were using the building and how they felt about the building.