Muntpunt is an experience library in the heart of Brussels. This means, that besides being a traditional library, Muntpunt is also connecting the people from Brussels with their neighbourhood by hosting a lot of activities and events. Muntpunt also offers a wide range of information about the city. It is a Flemish library, but they want to emphasise that they are an open house and they welcome everybody. It’s a place for everyone to meet each other, from culture-dummy to culture-freak.

During schools exam period, Muntpunt notices a high peak in visitor amounts, especially in the number of students. In these periods high schoolers, college and university students are frequently visiting the library to study. Currently, there’s a reservation system, but it only allows to make a reservation a few study spaces. For the other seats the rule of ‘first come first served’ applies. Today, this system doesn’t meet the expectations of the team. That’s why the goal for this project was to design a better comprehensive and modern system.

The study places in the Muntpunt library.

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We started with getting to know Muntpunt by a full day of observation during which we followed different employees during their daily tasks and responsibilities and questioned them about their working routines. After this observation we got a clear understanding about the broad structural organisation during these busy months. To get an even more detailed view about the underlying processes, we conducted interviews with different profiles of Muntpunt employees, from the stewards, to the communications team, to the floormanager and so on. To gain more insights about the visitors view, we launched an online survey in which we measured the current satisfaction about the reservation system. By doing this, we could start developing concepts based on both qualitative and quantitative research.

After the research phase, we started developing concepts to fulfil the needs of the different target groups: the students, visitors, stewards and employees of Muntpunt. We proposed a number of compatible design solutions build around three concepts; the reservation system itself, the communication about the system and the implementation of the system in the complex structure of the library building.

Out of these solutions, Muntpunt can select their preferred combination. In the following design phase, we’ll simulate a prototype and test these solutions on a small scale.

In this way, we can continue to iterate and design the perfect solution before having to implement it in the broad organisational system of Muntpunt.