First-Year Experience for WSU Students.
For this project, the Dean of Wayne State University College of Education wanted to create a new orientation experience for first-year students. We were tasked with highlighting the key aspects of Wayne State's campus, the city of Detroit, and the social opportunities available to students. To achieve these goals, I proposed organizing a scavenger hunt for the first-year students to participate in during their first year at Wayne State University.
Idea List
Before deciding on the scavenger hunt for my project, I made a list of potential ideas. I then narrowed it down to my two favorite ideas: a WhatsApp group chat and a scavenger hunt, and provided reasons for each. After discussing with the Dean and fellow designers, we ultimately chose to go with the scavenger hunt.
Mood Board
After deciding on the Scavenger Hunt idea, I created a mood board for it. I included a color palette and images that I wanted the participants to associate with the scavenger hunt. I aimed for the First-Years to experience the strength, creativity, and boldness that Detroit and Wayne State offer throughout each activity they take part in.
Infographic
After completing the mood board, I proceeded to work on the infographic for this project. My goal with the infographic was to consolidate all the pertinent information about Wayne State, Detroit, and the social aspects of the college. I designed the infographic to help me structure my ideas and gather information about the locations I wanted to introduce to first-year students during the Scavenger Hunt.
Final Design
After finalizing the mood board and the infographic, I created a Scavenger Hunt. The most challenging part was creating riddles that were easy enough for students who have never been to Detroit or Wayne State to understand, yet also required some thinking. Additionally, I had to collaborate with the Dean to determine the best way to distribute the Scavenger Hunt to the students. We decided that the best approach was to send the Scavenger Hunt to the students' email after they had completed their orientation. They could then choose to work on it individually or in groups to complete the hunt.
Design Brief
The final step for this project was to write a short design brief or design summary of everything I did. The design brief was consistent with the colors I chose, the reasons behind selecting specific fonts, and why I decided on particular pictures and places for the students to visit. The intention behind all these decisions was to instill a sense of pride in the students for their school and to encourage them to embrace the slogan “Detroit Strong!”. This will be essential as they start their college journey and encounter challenges. They need to learn to be Detroit Strong and rely on the support of friends and faculty to help them through their journey.
The College of Education and Dean enjoyed this design so much that they decided to implement it in their first-year orientation for the foreseeable future.