@drysinister:
I teach art and design so let me give you some headache-saving advice 
if you have, as you say, no hardware background or experience, then this is a really complicated project to undertake as your first hardware project. About the simplest thing you could do would be to take an existing wifi detector and hack it, but even that would take a several weeks or even months to go from zero experience to working prototype. Unless they're teaching you electronics classes at the same time- are they?
You can probably exercise other skills: conceptual, model-making, 3D/2D visualization etc that will get you way further down the road (in terms of concept and exploration of the issues at hand), than tearing your hair out trying to get a wifi-based prototype working from scratch!
D