University of Hertfordshire | Law Court Building

University of Hertfordshire is located in Hatfield and comprises three campuses: College Lane, de Havilland Campus, and Bayfordbury Campus and is home to 25k students. There are over 90 dispersed buildings organised into eleven schools and 50 academic departments!

In November 2013, Striking Places were commissioned by Ed Layt, Head of Marketing, to extend Street View inside the entire university, around 30 locations. Two years later we are still shooting newly constructed additions to the university. This already enormous university virtual tour project has now broadened to include TourDash interactive overlays, beginning with the Law Court Building.

The purpose built, £10 million Law Court Building, situated on the De Havilland campus is much more than a place where students study the law. The multi-disciplinary design provides a full-scale Courtroom with a public gallery, pro bono Law Clinic (provides legal advice to the Hertfordshire community, purpose-built Mediation Centre and state-of-the-art journalism suite.

TourDash is an exciting Google approved product that enhances an existing Google Street View Trusted tour. The interactive overlay engages the user with targeted content and smart links, turning your visual virtual tour into a powerful marketing tool. While almost every business can benefit from an additional TourDash layer, the benefits for the university are obvious. Our university virtual tour project brief is to provide prospective students the opportunity to look around and get familiar with the campus and encourage them to attend open days.

We have put many TourDash features to use within this tour; menu navigation, dynamic and boundary hotpots (pop-up windows that reveal additional information using images and graphics, text boxes, and embedded video) directly delivering key messages to prospective students globally.
 
Ed Layt | Head of Marketing Services | University of Hertfordshire
“Striking Places were fantastic to work with from the start of the university virtual tour project. We had very specific and unique needs and they were excellent at listening to those and working out the best approach for us. This is a really huge project covering many university schools across both campuses and we have been guided through each stage by this very professional team. We are now entering phase two of the university virtual tour, which involves shooting more of the university facilities but also the addition of an exciting overlay known TourDash that enables us to embed each tour on our website with additional useful information for the viewer.
Of course it really helped that Jo Hailey knew the University very well from her years working here. Her insider knowledge and longstanding friendships with many of the staff has made the process even smoother.

I would highly recommend Striking Places. They were flexible, cause a minimum of disruption on campus and have made people feel very comfortable whilst working around them. We couldn’t have asked for more.”
 
#Interesting Fact No. 42: The Replica Law Courts at the University may seem familiar since they are used a lot in programmes such as Eastenders, being such a perfect carbon copy of a Crown Court and given the issues around filming in real courts.