Campus Experience Index - RATING AND COMPARING CAMPUS PERFORMANCE
Our Campus Experience IndexTM is used by universities around the world to understand student experience on campus.
We use custom-built software and ethnographic tools to understand how users view and use your campus. This covers where and how they interact with the environment, from arrival to departure.
Our clients use this data for masterplanning, directing capital and operational spend, design guideline reviews and campus benchmarking.
Read more below about the CEI and view some case studies.
Campus Experience Index
Below steps through our Campus Experience program. We can complete the full program, or components, based on your needs.
STEP 1: EXPERIENCE EVALUATION
The CEI combines quantiative scores with qualitative feedback from students across 10 elements of the campus. The scores allow us to identify performance defecits, whilst the qualitaitive data gives rich and deep insights into a student's micro-experiences over their day. Our software manages large volumes of student feedback and allows us to theme and present key issues to clients.
The 10 elements of campus experience:
- Journey and arrival to campus
- Teaching and learning spaces
- Library and informal study spaces
- Social, relax and rejuvenate spaces
- Wayfinding and accessibility
- Information technology on campus
- Community and belonging
- Eating experience
- Safety on campus
- Optional: Student support service facilities, fitness and recreation facilities
Clients use CEI across single or multiple campuses to benchmark, compare experience and develop targeted programs for improvement. It can be scaled from a whole campus down to a faculty, school or individual building.
We design engagement programs to accompany the roll-out across your campus which include online evaluations, pop-up stands, journey-mapping and other innovative engagement methods.
STEP 2: GAP ANALYSIS AND BENCHMARK
We combine intelligence gathered from your campus, along with others we have worked with globally. Through this process we can understand how your campus performs for users and where to focus your energy.
We help gain clarity across questions such as:
- What influences where students go on campus?
- What spaces motivate and inspire them?
- What classrooms and lecture theatres make it better, or more difficult, to learn?
- Why don’t they stay longer on campus?
- What are the variations between different faculties or cohorts?
A collection of articles and papers can be found on our website, which include insights from the data we collect through this process, along with other trends and research.
STEP 3: DEVELOP CAMPUS UPLIFT STRATEGY
It’s not enough to collect the data, how do you implement it? What you don’t need is another dust-gathering report. Evidence based planning requires easy dissemination and integration of data into initiatives.
We have collective experience working with universities globally. Every institution faces its own political and governance challenges. Along with a group of partners, we work with each institution to integrate findings into their planning, such as:
- Develop campus activation programs
- Student and staff experience objective and KPI development
- Design guideline changes to encompass student experience
- Capital and operational project and spending allocation
- Integration to organisational strategy
- Estate strategy development
STEP 4: CHECK IN
Campus experience will change year to year. This can be influenced by elements within the institution's control (such as new hubs or buildings) and those outside control (such as changes to public transport and surrounding area developments). We have designed the process to be fluid so you can stay in touch with experience year on year. This enables performance and investment to be measured, and planning priorities to be adjusted.

If you are interested in licencing the CEI for use, please contact us to discuss. It can be used by universities or consultants internally.