The Yale-NUS Legacy website: Telling the Yale-NUS story virtually

The Yale-NUS College Library in 3D Dollhouse View from the Virtual Tour. Image provided by Guangyi Ma.

As we draw closer to 2025, legacy building continues to be a key focus at Yale-NUS College. Many Yale-NUS community members have been contributing to the Legacy Projects in different ways. The Projects comprises several initiatives, including the College Oral History Project, the Legacy Sculpture, the Legacy Book, the College Digital Archives, and the Legacy website. Through these diverse initiatives, the College community will have a readily accessible means of remembering and reconnecting with Yale-NUS College.

The vision of digitally capturing campus spaces to remember the Yale-NUS story was earlier inspired by insights gathered from students, faculty, and the broader Yale-NUS Community. The Legacy website has just been launched today on 8 September and comprises an interactive virtual campus tour hosted on a dedicated website, offering dynamic storytelling and information tags that vividly portray the vibrancy of life and learning at the College. It features key spaces – the three residential colleges (Cendana, Elm, Saga), the library and performance hall, studios, classrooms and lecture theatres. Visitors can enjoy navigating these cherished physical spaces while being immersed in live events captured within the virtual scenes.

Saga College featuring the Capstone Symposium in Saga’s Rector’s Common from the Virtual Tour. Image provided by Guangyi Ma.

The virtual tour team has been hard at work designing the website, gathering feedback from the community, and preparing the three-dimensional (3D) tours. The 3D-scanning stage of the College campus started in March 2023. 80 per cent of this work was done in-house to maintain consistent standards throughout the process. Subsequently, the team dedicated their time to uploading the images, tagging objects and people, and editing their material on the platform. Recently, they shifted their focus to populating the virtual tour pages, refining curated content and conducting usability tests on the prototype, all in preparation for the ultimate launch.

To gain insights about the behind-the-scenes work, we interviewed three members of the virtual tour team: Product Manager Paul Tay, UX Designer Guangyi Ma and Curator Robin Blackburn. Together, they collaborated to ensure the virtual tour aligns seamlessly with the purpose of preserving and celebrating the College’s legacy.

The team members elaborated on the roles they played in seeing the virtual tour to completion. Product Manager Paul Tay shared, “My role as Product Manager was to oversee the production and development of the virtual tour, and to ensure the experience we are curating stays true to our vision.”

Preview of Landing Page of Virtual Tour. Image provided by Guangyi Ma.

User Experience (UX) designer Guangyi Ma also provided insights on her responsibilities. “My role as a UX Designer involved planning and designing the overall structure and user experience of the virtual tour website. This included determining the navigation flow, organising the tour spaces, and creating intuitive interfaces that encourage engagement and exploration.” As someone who enjoys photography and UX design, this project allowed her to combine her two passions in a meaningful way. She added, “From ideation to execution, my experience working on the virtual tour is a combination of creative fulfilment, collaboration, and the joy of contributing to the project that will have a lasting impact.”

In addition to organising the structure of the tour, the team employed storytelling elements to provide visitors with richer insights at each virtual location. They invited people to share their experiences through audio introductions, complemented by short stories crafted by Curator Robin Blackburn which enhanced the overall virtual tour experience. When asked to describe his role, Curator Blackburn said, “My role as curator was to write short introductions to each tour, giving the background history of the location, or the event covered in the virtual tour.”

Saga College Featuring Chalk Wall Information Tag at Saga Sky Garden from the Virtual Tour. Image provided by Guangyi Ma.

Product Manager Tay shared, “I hope the virtual tour will serve as a lead-in for everyone to get a sense of the vibe – the dynamism and youthfulness – of Yale-NUS College. I also hope that the launch of the virtual tour will help us garner more interest and contributions from our community in this continuous process of documenting [our] legacy.”

The launch of the Legacy website is just the beginning, with the aspirations of the Digital Legacy Project team and the broader Yale-NUS community coming to fruition. As the virtual tour team continues to perform 3D scanning on more spaces this semester, the site will progressively be updated to include spaces such as the Black Box Theatre, Multi-Purpose Hall (MPH), Tan Chin Tuan (TCT) Lecture Theatre, and the College’s Science Labs. Audio introductions will also be added as part of the virtual tour to tell some of the stories behind these spaces. Moving forward, the team will be focusing on curating stories that showcase the College’s history and philosophy, academic curriculum, vibrant and inclusive student life, special occasions and much more. Our heartfelt gratitude goes out to the dedicated team, and all who have contributed to the unveiling of the website.

The Legacy website can be accessed here. We also welcome further contributions to the Legacy Projects, which can be made here.