LUCKY DUC!

For our final group project, we had to make a game. The bad guys (reference to the book Supperbetter) were the things that freshmen struggle or hates. Michelle, Elysia, and I was in the same group and we decided to create a game about the DUC, a current dining hall at Emory. Throughout the year, I noticed that lot of people decide to not go to DUC including myself. The reason for this was because DUC does not have a great food and some people thinks it is waste of money to spend time to go to DUC and eat when they could go to Cox and easily grab something to go. Our goal was to make students go to DUC more often since we already have the unlimited meal swipes and it is good to maximize the unlimited meal swipes. First, we thought what would motivate people to go to DUC more often. As I mentioned earlier, some students think it is waste of time to go to DUC and stay there so we thought of the to-go box. The other reward that we thought of was the Dooley dollars since it could be used in places that students like to go such as Starbucks, Cox, etc. then we decided on how many meal swipes that student needs to do each week. However, we thought that this game was too simple. That was when we thought of the lack of interaction between student and faculty (for this game DUC staff specifically). So, we added a way to increase the interaction between students and staff by having staff nominate a student and student can write a short note to staff so that they could increase their chance of getting nominated. For this reward, we thought of the Dine with the Chef, a program that Emory dining hall already has. I personally thought that our game was well organized and if we showed this to the administration, we could actually make this an actual game. We were utilizing the programs that already exists and the Dooley dollars that we are giving out is a small amount that would not impact the financial problem. Personally, if there was a game like this in the beginning of the year, I would have gone to DUC more often. I thought it motivates student to go to DUC more often since they have something to look forward to and also if the interaction between the student and staff increases, students would want to go to DUC since they know the staff. We thought the game could be pretty much set at this point. However, some students could not feel the same way that we thought. So we thought of the reason what other factor could make student motivate and we thought about the environmental problem that could be caused by the leftover food. DUC is required to make sufficient amount of food for people who has a meal plan and all the freshmen has the meal plan. Since not a lot of freshmen go to DUC, there would be a lot of food that are wasted. If more people go to DUC initially there would be less food wasted (thinking that most of the students would finish what they get at the DUC – a problem that classmate said). By saying this to the students, we thought more students would go since they would feel like they are helping the environment. Making this game was lot of thinking and trying to figure how to make it realistic as possible but it was definitely worth making it. I think our game is very well made and as mentioned before could possibly be shown to the administration. Not only trying to think how to maximize the DUC swipes but we also tackled other freshmen problem which is lack of relationship with faculty. Moreover, a food waste which is a bigger problem could were mentioned in this game.