Room Race

UO Housing adds fun interactive features to Its online dorm sign-up system

Joyce Winslow
jwins@uoregon.edu

No need to be a track star to participate in Room Race!

If you're a current resident hall student interested in reserving campus housing, all that's required is your Room Race access code, an Internet connection, and a few minutes of your time.

May 1 marked the fifth anniversary of Room Race, UO Housing's online sign-up system for reserving dorm rooms and requesting roommates. The website with the Track Town theme (https://housing.uoregon.edu/roomrace/) is the brainchild of Tenaya Meaux, Housing's director of marketing and communications.

Meaux had long recognized the need for a more streamlined way of doing business. Eight years ago, students were still queuing around the block to sign up for housing, and the entire process took several days. "We tried to make the sign-up experience fun by offering pizzas and prizes, but it was quite cumbersome," Meaux recalls. "Students were selecting rooms from maps on the wall--it was very analog." The system was onerous for Housing staff, too. After registration was complete, all the data had to be laboriously typed into a database.

Meaux was determined to bring UO Housing into the 21st century. "Staying young, staying current," was her goal. The first online version of Room Race was static: it consisted of a PDF document that could be downloaded, printed, and filled out by hand. That eliminated the need to stand in line, but it was still fairly primitive.

Over the years, the website has become more interactive. Today students register entirely online, and it takes just minutes for them to choose their rooms and roommates. The feature-rich site offers easy navigation, campus maps, and color coding to indicate room type and availability. In addition, it clearly shows which rooms are ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) accessible.

This year's version of Room Race took a giant leap forward by introducing a graphical interface that allows students to click directly on the rooms they want. It also incorporates social networking features, including MySpace-inspired student profiles to aid in roommate selection. Overall, Meaux and her web team are pleased with the result. "It's more intuitive now, and fun. It meant more work for our staff, but the complexity is all on the back end, hidden from users."

Next year, Meaux and her team hope to add a search feature to make the site even more user-friendly.

Hear what students have to say about Room Race...