Wescam, elsewhere stylized “wescam,” “WeScam,” or “WesCam,” is one of Wesleyan University’s long-standing traditions. The site, essentially a short-term hookup app, was originally built in 1998 as a course final—predating FaceBook by about 10 years.

My undergraduate art thesis was an exercise in mapping the “hidden architectures” of Gen Z collegiate community. I immediately thought of Wescam; its social network is a digital trace of our interactions on the metaphysical campus.

As with many of Wesleyan’s student traditions, however, the project fell (effectively) dormant following the COVID-19 pandemic.

The late 2010s–early 2020s site’s interface was minimal and snappy, but felt outdated. I decided I’d rebuild the site from scratch, with a new team and anonymity as our core tenet.

I acted as the sole point of contact for students working separately on marketing and programming, and the project’s lone designer.

EngineeringJump to "Engineering"

Due to loss of institutional memory, my backend developer and I decided to rebuild the codebase from scratch. We opted for a modern and low-cost stack, with minimal external infrastructure to maintain:

• Fresh web framework, with Preact islands for client-side JavaScript;
• Supabase for authentication and its PostgreSQL database.
• Deno WebSockets for live chat. Previous versions of the site required refresh for new messages, meaning poor user retention and a reliance on heavy email systems for notifications.
• Custom-styled components in Tailwind CSS.
• Mailgun email notifications, triggered nightly via CRON.

Bleeding-edge tech was both our strong suit and our weakest link. We frequently encountered new issues (e.g. unreliable Supabase auth emails, Fresh’s poor WebSocket support), but the dependencies’ active communities and quick pace of development meant rapid resolution. And for future maintainers, we can count on long-term support.

Thanks to Supabase’s free tier, and Deno Deploy, our only expenditure was Mailgun. Including the domain name wesc.am, wescam 2026 cost under $100 to build and run.

DesignJump to "Design"

I wanted to refresh the site with a more contemporary aesthetic, while maintaining stylistic ties to its predecessors and to the university.

For wescam’s logo, which had been absent from its visual identity prior to my iteration, I opted for a playful spin on Wesleyan University’s shield monogram.

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The Drooling Face emoji is “often used to show desire for a person (sexy, attractive).”^[1]Drooling Face, Emojipedia Superimposing the immediately-recognizable iOS design on the familiar-to-students monogram shape articulates a link to Wesleyan and the wescam brand’s teasing persona.

The site needed to stay playful while articulating its modernity (especially as readily-accessible digital tools are increasingly democratized). Seniors (the target audience)—who may have been familiar with wescam’s previous incarnations—needed visual cues towards the web app’s live-chat flow.

Designed with full mobile functionality in mind, views for authenticated users were kept minimal. Occasional “cardinal red” details maintain stylistic unity and an underlying connection to Wesleyan.

How to find loveJump to "How to find love"

Wescam’s primary user flow is our student search and match functionality. I wanted something that felt contiguous with the user dashboard, but fresh, teasing at the excitement of prospective connection.

The search page achieves this with an inverted palette, using a subtly-animated cardinal red background gradient. A centered text box makes search the main attraction, while keeping delineating information readily accessible.

A vulgar-to-some animation is playful and suggestive, but functional, providing one-off visual feedback for successful matches. We grappled with how best to differentiate existing matches, and settled on an icon in the chat list, and a subtle change in chat outline colour.

Governance & OrganizationJump to "Governance & Organization"

My leadership of wescam was a direct product of mismanagement and lack of institutional memory. This meant that a large—if not the largest—goal of this project was to ensure its continued stewardship and legacy. I wrote a series of internal documents, detailing the project’s core mission, rules, and suggestions.

The project’s core tenets are anonymity, ephemerality, and community:

Anonymity: On such a small campus, initiatives like wescam being tied to an individual’s identity is an immeasurable detriment, as using the site becomes perceived as an endorsement.

To maintain a ring of (dis)trust, all team members stay fully anonymous to one another, except for the group’s leader. The leader is thus responsible for facilitating all communication.

Members swear to secrecy when they join the project, and may only reveal their identities on (or following) the day of their commencement from Wesleyan University.

Ephemerality: Wescam is made special by its limited timeframe. Were the project to run year-round, it would lose the collective excitement it creates and thus betray its third tenet.

Community: This is all about Wesleyan, its students, and ways technology can still serve to bring us closer together.

I also detailed a succession plan:

Each member of the project is appointed by the prior lead of their respective “department,” during the month of their commencement.

Should a member remain at Wesleyan an additional semester or year (be it for an MA program or to make up credits), they may not continue on the project. Their influence will be limited to an advisory role, and communications regarding wescam may only be articulated through their appointee.

A new leader was chosen for 2027 and will carry on the mantle.