The Digital Experience Lab (DxL) has the mandate to help the IT organization safely experiment with artificial intelligence (AI) by testing and proving concepts with the intention to then scale those initiatives into future IT services. The goal is to realize value from investments in shaping concepts and ideas before transforming them into enhanced services for the UBC community. The lab has already created some AI solutions that are aimed at reducing costs, enhancing administrative functions, and creating seamless user experiences for faculty, staff, and students.
The following are examples of projects that DxL is currently focused on:
- AI Assistant Chatbots - enhance user experience by providing instant assistance and support by enabling staff to interact with a conversational AI tool to support daily workflows, task automation, and knowledge access
- Smart Triage - a machine learning AI-powered tool designed to automatically categorize and assign incoming service tickets to appropriate groups, making the call centre workflows faster and more resource efficient, resulting in faster ticket response.
- UBC LLM - a UBC-specific secure, enterprise-grade large language model (LLM) platform tailored to the university’s unique terminology, concepts, and context offering a more accurate, safe, and personalized experience for faculty and students. The tool enables users to perform conversational data analysis and generative AI tasks.
What sets DxL apart is its collaborative, multidisciplinary structure. The lab brings together members from UBC IT, including AI engineers, enterprise architects, data governance professionals, client service managers, and change management specialists along with Legal Counsel, PrISM and client stakeholders. This integrated approach ensures that each project aligns with UBC's strategic goals and complies with institutional privacy and policy standards.
As AI continues to evolve, DxL is helping UBC lead with purpose, transforming ideas into impactful solutions and building a future-ready digital campus. Through a culture of experimentation and collaboration, DxL is starting to enhance UBC service teams' functional delivery while contributing towards the digital goals of the university.
