Original Sketch:
This has been a work in progress in brainstorming how to visually inform and inspire prospective and new students to Peninsula College.
Promise and purpose:
The premise of the project is to inform, inspire and attract new students to Peninsula College. The power of the aesthetics in the infographics will make it engaging, as will an immersive journey in Second Life for the prospective and new students. The essential qualities of the project are creating compelling aesthetics, a call to answer and a sense of excitement and purpose for those students who answer the call to come to Peninsula College. The project’s fundamental purpose is to draw more students to enroll and engage the new students who have enrolled. It’s a student service-oriented project that will primarily teach and inform and entertain at the same time. The project is essentially marketing the college and its dedication to students’ success.
Audience and market:
The intended users are the prospective student considering attending Peninsula College and the new students entering the college. Because the students are of varying ages and in varying stages in life, the audience could be students as young as 18 years-old to 90-years-old for those returning later in life. Since the concept and practice of visual information — infographics — dates back to at least 1854 (Infographics, the Power of Visual Storytelling, Lankow, Ritchie, Crooks, 2012, p. 15) and more primitively, to Egyptian hieroglyphics, infographics will appeal to all age groups. Younger generations may enjoy more digital forms of delivery, such as social media, virtual worlds and games. Older generations who are technically savvy may enjoy social media and online magazines or traditional print magazines. It is difficult to quantify how many in the intended user group will be technically sophisticated.
The project needs to appeal to both the technically sophisticated and those who are not or the college will lose a sector of the audience that it wants to reach. To speak to them, the college has to package the visual information in several visual forms. The project needs to reach this wide audience or it will lose prospective students and at the same time fail to help its new students find their way in the Hero’s Journey, which is ultimately success at Peninsula College.
A Second Life version of this project will be very successful for the demographic who is technically sophisticated.
Medium, platform, and genre:
The project is being made for the Internet, smart phones and possibly print and game media as well. The special strengths of the Internet and smart phone experience is that it can be interactive and in Second Life, will be immersive. The strengths of print media are that it’s comfortable, convenient and concise for a technically unsophisticated audience of students. The project uses all of those strengths because it uses the collective talent of its current students and their talents and skills in each of those platforms. It also shows the strength of the college in and of itself because the project is a project that creates an on-going, persistent engagement experience produced by students. It will minimize limitations if it has an on-boarding avenue convenient and accessible for technically unsophisticated students.
The hardware for the project is a personal computer, mobile phone, tablet and possibly a game console. The genre falls into stimulation, virtual worlds, web series and an action game. It contains the story of the “Hero’s Journey,” — a setting, conflict, a hero, a mentor, a series of obstacles, a victory or re-birth and a conclusion.
Narrative/gaming elements:
The project does contain a narrative — the familiar narrative of the Hero’s Journey. As a class, we worked on our own contributions to the narrative. The major events the user will need to deal with are answering the call, finding and meeting a mentor, overcoming obstacles and continuing in the journey to education and graduation. The tone mirrors life: it’s exciting and inviting in some parts and scary and challenging in others, making it all about the journey. For these reasons, it resonates with users. There could be a fascinating game version of this story but the gaming elements have not been worked out. Winning would be finishing a degree after beating the enemies and friends who act like enemies — known in the vernacular as fren-emies — and overcoming other obstacles. Losing would either mean not answering the call or not finishing the degree program.
Here is my final project:
Winding Straight Road 