How students learn about their apartment and perform basic maintenance themselves

Digital user guide for student housing tenants

The Box is a private student housing facility in Tromsø, developed by Tromsø Eiendomsutvikling, and a home to 180 tenants since its completion in 2021. This pilot shows how collaboration between facilities managers, landlords and tenants can result in better information and increased safety and customer satisfaction.

Bye-bye binders

The developers of "The Box Tromsø" wanted to support a wide variety of needs for the students, from study rooms and social arenas to other services and safety procedures. Having a low overhead they needed a tool that could effectively communicate information about the use of all facilities and equipment, both in the common areas as well as the private quarters.

The developers also wanted to differentiate themselves through their user experience, which meant looking into options besides your usual binders and laminated posters. They needed a more sustainable and easy solution for sharing and updating information to new and existing students. Unifractal proved to be the perfect tool for the job for providing information about everything the tenants need.

Once that was established, we started a pilot involving both Pago (the landlord) and Eco Forvaltning (facilities manager). “We have produced several films showing practical use of equipment inside every student dorm, reducing the need for training and physical manuals”, says Morten Tidemann from Pago.

«We have produced several films showing practical use of equipment inside every student dorm, reducing the need for training and physical manuals.»

It's all about happy tenants

We quickly created a space that is accessed by the students from their first day at The Box. To the landlord, Pago, Unifractal has become a tool for making critical information readily available and having a good relationship with the tenants.

By scanning a QR-code they get instant access to Unifractal, which provides updated content and information created by Geir Bjelkarøy, the facilities manager.

Geir says Unifractal saves him a lot of time as the facilities manager, and he can spend more time helping tenants with more technical questions.

«It gives us a lot of freedom, when we can portray all the information we need from within the app.»

Fighting burned pizzas and fire alarms

As a startup, we need to make sure we develop a solution that answers a real need in the market. A frequent problem experienced by both students and landlords is the untimely fire alarm caused by burned food left in the oven for too long.

During a student workshop we heard stories about their experience waking up from the fire alarm in the middle of the night, not knowing how to turn it off. They have only a few minutes to revert the alarm before the fire department shows up.

This is a huge expense for The Box and the responsible tenant has to pay several thousand NOK from their student budget. Most importantly it's also a huge pain for the 179 other students that are woken up in the middle of the night by the alarm. Using Unifractal, fire safety instructions are easily accessible to the tenants and they can refresh their knowledge directly from their smartphone.

We are excited to continue our work with The Box and want to create an even better service for student apartments and the short term rental market.