Fast evolving developments of COVID-19 meant increased vigilance and enhanced precautionary measures on campus. During these challenging times, hidden heroes at University Campus Infrastructure are hard at work keeping our community safe through contact tracing, temperature screening and safe distancing measures.
We speak to three of our UCI colleagues who have been actively involved in communicating these safety measures to the NUS Community: by designing Safe Distancing stickers and managing the COVID-19 mailbox.
Harry Lim from the Office of Facilities Management
Harry: “Effective communication is so important in nudging behavioural change. We hope that the efforts we’ve put into our communication materials enable staff and students to adhere to safety advisories, and encourage consistent behaviours over time.
I have been actively involved in designing messaging posters and Safe Distancing floor stickers to help the community exercise proper safety measures. When it came to the design of the Safe Distancing stickers, one of the critical factors was to ensure that the stickers are visible from afar and are able to stand out on their own. We looked at using bright colours that were commonly associated with safety and ended up choosing a bright yellow tone that’s eye-catching and doesn’t come across as a warning sign. Another aspect we considered was size, like how big the stickers should be printed in order for the public to perceive the message being put across. We did a few sample tests before deciding on our final design, which you can find below. Everyone has a role to play in the fight against COVID-19, be it big or small. For me, it is in communicating necessary precautions through design.”
Safe Distancing sticker
Loo Deliang from Office of Estate Development
Deliang: “As a behavioural practitioner in my day-to-day work, I have been thinking of ways to design behavioural-based communication messages, operations and infrastructure to facilitate our community to adopt good hygiene practices in a post-COVID world. The surroundings around us play an important role in triggering good hygiene habits. If soap is dispensed from a separate tap placed just next to water taps, people are very likely use the soap to wash their hands. If we design messages that are attention-grabbing and relevant, people are more likely to practise the desired behaviours if the advertisements are salient and resonates with them. Hence, Harry and I came up with a striking sticker design above, to appeal to people’s personal and social responsibility to keep each other safe with the message, ‘Keep Everyone Safe’.”
Sheena Shen from Office of Safety, Health and Environment
Sheena: “A lot of people today, including myself are working from home. Although there are perks like less time spent commuting and a greater ability to stagger our lunch hours to avoid crowds, there are also some obstacles like the difficulty of concentrating at home when there are multiple people having meetings at the same time in the same space! For me, that would be the dining table you see in the picture, which we use at home as a make-shift work area.
Working from home took away most forms of human interactions and forced our team to use online communication tools to replace face-to-face discussions. In these team discussions, we often talk about the best ways we can calm the community, encourage people to carry on with life as usual (with proper protection), guide and advise the community on based on the latest advisories, or direct people to the correct channels so they can get the help they need. One of the ways I help ensure we can achieve this is by managing the COVID-19 queries mailbox, where I guide the community on what they should do upon close contact with confirmed or suspected cases, or if they should serve a Stay Home Notice / Leave of Absence upon return from overseas travel.”
Story contributed by Office of Senior Vice President (Campus Infrastructure).
Read more about our other hidden heroes.