2017 Data Storytelling Studio @ MIT

By Nikki Waghani, Sean Soni, Sharlene Chiu, Margaret Yu

The data say that different cars get vastly different mileage, and mileage also varies from highway to city driving.  We want to tell this story because we want to educate consumers on the difference between cars and styles of driving when it comes to gas mileage.  Thus we have created a choose your own adventure game where the choice of car at the onset affects how the scenarios play out, with an emphasis on gas mileage, and a goal of acquiring “likes” along the way.  Our audience is specifically young professionals who are thinking about buying a BMW.  We plan to place our game in a kiosk in BMW dealerships.  Our goals are to educate consumers about their choices, and encourage consumers to buy more fuel-efficient cars in order to help BMW meet government requirements regarding the average fuel efficiency of their fleet.  

Our data is sourced from the 2016 information at fueleconomy.gov, and is the result of testing done by the EPA as well as by vehicle manufacturers with oversight from the EPA.  Using this data, we’ve designed a quick, easy, and fun way for someone entering a dealership to learn about the brand’s cars while figuring out what might best suit their needs. The goal is not to sell a particular car – this would be impossible as each person’s needs are very different – we will, however, help them learn the differences between a brand’s numerous cars without feeling overwhelmed.  In order to encourage the customer to play multiple rounds of this game with different cars, our kiosk will print out a coupon for free add-ons (such as window tint or undercoating) each time the game is played.  By playing multiple rounds of this game, the customer will get a feel for how much money they can save by buying a more fuel-efficient electric or hybrid car, and what some of the potential tradeoffs may be.  Our game also integrates educational facts into the game, such as the fact that fuel economy is better on the highway than in the city, and going above 60mph on the highway reduces fuel economy.  This game is much more effective than simply presenting fuel economy data, as it allows the consumer to interact with the data rather than just read it.

Global warming is inevitable, but if we play the game right, the results won’t be as catastrophic.

My data game is a modified version of Jenga. There are 3 stakeholders; environmentalists (pink pieces), politicians (green pieces), and human factors (representing fossil fuel companies, etc) . While staying in the confines of their roles, the players want to prevent the tower from falling as long as possible.

Player rules…

• Each round, the factors player must remove any tile.
• The politician player must remove or move one green tile each round.
• The environmentalist can remove or move one tile every other round. Every other round they may add to the tower at their discretion. The environmentalist starts with 3 extra pink tiles to do this.

What these rules represent…

The factors player represents the human factors constantly adding instability to the system. It is the job of the other two players to counteract this.

While politicians have a lot of power, they can’t change the system completely by performing additions. Also they are confined to moves that are dictated by their constituents and party (they can only move the green tiles). Therefore, their stabilizing effort is very slow and, could be, destructive.

While environmentalists have the power and knowledge to do good and help the system, this is slowed down by politics and destructive human factors. Furthermore, they have less influence than corporations or politicians, and therefore less tiles.

Player learning…

The first surface level learning comes from the pieces themselves, which all have different facts on them. The environmentalist tiles also have suggestions on them.

However the deeper level is understanding how these role confines actually represent the current system and the issues within it.

Team: Autumn Jing / Brandon Levy / Christian Feld / Kevin Zhang

We explored MASIE-NH which stands for the Multisensor Analyzed Sea Ice Extent – Northern Hemisphere. The data says that the Arctic is in peril as the ice cover has shrunk significantly over the last decade. We want to tell this story because losing the Arctic sea ice will result in very real consequences, from an increased number of life-threatening severe weather events to a positive feedback loop which will accelerate global warming, further destabilizing arid regions such as the Middle East.

We looked at data showing the daily extent of sea ice in the Northern Hemisphere from 2006 through 2016. We identified the annual low-point for each year of the data; that is, the lowest amount of sea ice in a given year. We averaged these annual lows for 2006-2010 and 2011-2015 and compared those numbers to one another and to the 2016 low-point. The 2011-2015 average low-point was 93% of the 2006-2010 average low-point, and the 2016 low-point was 88% of the 2006-2010 average.

Our participatory game is an effective and appropriate medium for telling this story. The limbo setup attracts people because at first sight it is a fun game. The ice extent low points mentioned above are represented by limbo bars of different heights.

The more the ice has shrunk, the lower the bar. Players get a short info sign at every bar, so that they know what it stands for. At the end of the track, there is one bar flat on the floor visualizing the scenario that the sea ice might totally vanish during the summer by 2040.

Once drawn into the physical experience, it is easier to bring our message across and encourage participants to act. A future iteration of this project would guide players to a website that provides a second layer of learning for the players. This site could also show time lapses of the ice extent in specific regions of the Northern Hemisphere.

Our audience is citizens in districts whose representatives are members of the House Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy, where “H.R. 861: To terminate the Environmental Protection Agency” is currently under review (15th district of Illinois / 3rd of Mississippi / 16th and 18th of Pennsylvania / 5h and 6th of Texas / 8th of North Carolina).

Our goal is to show people in those districts one of the consequences of global climate change and motivate them to call their representatives and demand that they block H.R. 861.

Zach Collins, Divya Goel, Meghan Kokoski, Tricia Shi

For our participatory data game, we envisioned a Bluetooth – enabled mobile game that aims to demonstrate the impact that individual transportation decisions have on the environment. The Bluetooth aspect allows you to connect your results to the other MIT players, and show how transportation decisions, when considered collectively, have an even more significant impact.

The data shows that personal cars, even when taken for a short distance, can emit a large amount of carbon, and that even public transportation produces carbon emissions. If walking and biking produce no per-use carbon emissions, then why doesn’t everyone chose these two options? Then answer is that these options come with the tradeoff of time. We wanted users to consider the tradeoffs of taking different forms of transportation because often it is not realistic to walk everywhere. These are implemented as constraints: a time cost, monetary cost, and carbon cost. The version we created for the sketch gives you these constraints (90 mins, $50, and 40 carbon credits) on an individual level. However, our goal for an expanded version would give a set of constraints for a group of people playing together, in order to emphasize the impact of collective decisions and incorporate concepts such as carpooling.

Our target audience for our game is MIT students. We selected tasks that would be common for a MIT student, as this will allow the results to resonate with our audience. As they select which mode of transportation, students are able to select what they would personally do. Because it is a mobile game, we would not need to set up a physical space for students to play, but rather we would just advertise the game to students through emails, and flyers around campus. We also think that we could get students playing the game with a booth in Lobby 10.

The first time a user plays the game, they are given only the time and money constraints. The emissions factor is brought in later on, so that students are able to see the difference in time and carbon production of their choices when making them under different pressures. We hope that once the results are shown, students will be more conscience of their transportation decisions. The collective totals will serve to demonstrate to students that transportation decisions are not isolated and if everyone considers the environment, then the effects can make a real difference.

link to app mock up: https://marvelapp.com/5b96b9b/screen/27337169