Healthy Eating for Everyone

Team members: Margaret Tian, Tony Zeng, Kimberly Yu

Many people in the US rely on food assistance programs (ex: SNAP) to meet their day to day needs – over half a million people are on SNAP in Massachusetts alone. SNAP recipients are given roughly $1.50 to spend on each meal, which means they often forego more expensive fresh produce. Programs such as Project Bread bridge the hunger gap by providing healthy, inexpensive food for people who are otherwise unable to afford it. We want to tell this story to raise awareness and support for Project Bread and related programs. Our audience is MIT students, most of whom are on the meal plan and are not usually aware of how privileged we are. We hope to display our slides on screens located in dorms with dining halls to catch students’ attention while they wait for eat. Our goals are to raise awareness about food insecurity and encourage MIT students to engage in activities that help end hunger in our local community such as participating in the Project Bread’s Walk for Hunger on May 7th, donating to Project Bread, and minimizing food waste when eating in MIT dining halls.

We used the Food for Free data source as well as Project Bread’s website to gather data about food insecurity in Massachusetts and Project Bread’s impact. To get an idea of what a typical meal for people on SNAP would be, we used a blog post written by a graduate student at Johns Hopkins who participated in the SNAP challenge. Ideally, we would gather more robust data on SNAP recipients’ diets. We couldn’t find data on how much Project Bread cost for one person, so we estimated it to be the same cost as providing SNAP (~$1.50/meal).

By comparing a SNAP meal with a typical MIT dining meal, we hope to bring a more personal aspect to our message. Many MIT students are dissatisfied with dining, but by comparing the food content, amount, and cost, we clearly show how lucky we are and emphasize how important it is for people struggling with food insecurity to have easy access to healthy food. This emphasis is iterated through a quote from Project Bread about healthy food being a right that everyone should have access to. To put things into perspective, we also include a slide that gives context to the impact we can have. Finally, we end with a slide that calls MIT students to action and encourages them to join Project Bread’s Walk for Hunger on May 7th. The entire slideshow would be automated and play quickly enough that students in dining line would see the entire message.

#GoGreenBoston2030 – Margaret Yu, Tina Quach, Divya Goel

The data says that there are people from many different parts of Boston that have all questions about how Boston’s transportation system can be more sustainable and environmentally friendly by 2030. We want to tell this story because we believe that highlighting the common theme across the various parts of Boston can foster empathy and a sense of community–one that can push for environmentally-friendly change in Boston’s transportation system.

Our audience are the adult commuters of the Boston community–whether they use private or public transportation, whether or not they walk or bike or drive or take the train–they each lead different lives that often does not leave room for empathy. Our goal is to encourage empathy between diverse adults of the Boston community and foster thought about how Boston make its transportation system and infrastructure environmentally friendly and sustainable and demonstrate. We want to people to be able to empathize with others who do not share the same neighborhood that they do and be able to identify differences and similarities about the questions people ask.

Our data came from Go Boston 2030’s Question Campaign, which asks people in 20 different Boston zip codes to share their questions about getting around Boston in the future. The data, consists of the textual representation of the questions organized by region or zip code, and labeled with a relevant category (e.g. sustainability/climate change, experiential quality, safety, access, innovation). We filtered the questions to keep only questions related to sustainability and the environment to focus on the specific theme of climate change.

We’ve designed and sketched an installation that allows people to hear others in the Boston community voice their questions–rather than just reading them–and localize where each question comes from. We envision that each Boston county will have a copy of the installation, located near a transit station. The installation will consist of a big touch-enabled screen depicting a map of Boston. The experience begins with a short video of questions from around Boston being voiced, while its origin is highlighted on the map. Then, the installation becomes interactive–people can tap areas they are interested in hearing from and listen to questions from these areas. Furthermore, they can also choose to contribute, sharing their own questions about the future of getting around sustainably in Boston by hitting a button to record their question.

We also wanted the observer to be able to understand the context behind some of the questions, and to continue thinking about it after leaving the booth. So, in the interactive portion at the end, after a user hears a question from an area, they will be presented with a QR code linking to an article or video about someone’s commute that led them to ask one of the questions just played. The observer can then scan this and experience the story on their journey/commute from the booth to their next destination. For example, the QR code on the right would give the backstory to this question from Dorchester: How do we make public transportation inviting so that people prefer taking it than driving their cars? The QR code on the left would give the backstory to this question from East Boston: Can we give more space to pedestrians and cyclists to make the choice to walk/bike for short trips the best option?

This installation is an appropriate and effective way to tell the data story because it is an open, flexible way for someone on the go (or someone on a leisurely walk) to hear other perspectives from around the Boston community. It is also appealing to people trying to go places (our audience!) because it uses a map. Hearing each question voiced by a real human, promotes the idea of really listening to one another as well as letting your voice be heard. Empathy is fostered because each question reflects a particular perspective and twist on the topic of sustainability.

The GoBoston Hackathon

Team: Kevin Zhang, Nina Mary Lutz, Jingxian Zhang

We looked at the GoBoston 2030 dataset and were intrigued by some of the ideas proposed by Boston residents, which ranged from practical problem in transportation system like bus ticket price to innovative technologies like flying cars. With all these inspiring ideas and questions, suppose there is a GoBoston 2030 Civil Engineering Hackathon to encourage young innovators to explore future transportation in Boston. To attract participants and help them explore the GoBoston questions as well as contribute more ideas, we decide to build an website visualizing what people from different Boston regions focus on about future transportation. Our audience are young entrepreneurs and inventors in Boston, and our goal is to get them to join us at the GoBoston 2030 Civil Engineering Hackathon where we will build the future together.

Users will start their exploration by seeing some personal stories from people live in different regions in Boston about their future demand in transportation. When entering the interface, users can see a map of Boston with photos and keywords in different regions representing people and their stories (Figure 1). By clicking a photo, users will be able to read more about the story and see a word cloud about what else of future transportation people in this region pay attention to (Figure 2). The word cloud is generated from the questions related to this region in GoBoston 2030 dataset. Users can also click a keyword in the word cloud to see questions containing the keyword or under a specific theme (if the keyword is a theme name).

By presenting photos and personal stories, we wish to draw users’ attention to what people really need through vivid stories. When users’ attention is drawn to one region, the word cloud can serve as a port to support future exploration about other ideas related to this region.

Food Insecurity Posters

Aina Martinez Zurita, Tricia Shi, and Zachary Collins

The data says that there is a large section of our society that grapples with food security every day. Many people, due to a societal expectation to be able to provide for themselves and their family, feel too ashamed to reach out for help when they struggle to make ends meet.

The Greater Boston Area has many shelters, food pantries, and churches that offer free meals, housing, training, and other resources for free. Our target audience are individuals who are struggling with food insecurity, specifically those who use public transportation near these shelters and resource centers. Many people often don’t know what is in their area or even that that it’s typical for someone in their situation to receive assistance. The goal of our posters is to demonstrate that there are locations in their local area – near and around their home and daily commute – that can help and foster a sense that reaching out to these places for help is normal.

In the Food For Free data files, we noticed a common theme among many of the individuals in the Project Bread Status Report – prior to getting the help that lifted them off their feet, they were unaware of where to go and / or embarrassed by the need to get help. We wanted to advertise some of these shelters but in a way that utilized the personal narrative surrounding the status report interviewees in an effort to shift the viewer’s perception.

We researched a few of the shelters near and around Boston (Rosie’s Place, Elizabeth Peabody House, and My Brother’s Table) and gathered information about the number of people they are able to serve and what public transportation stops are close by. Using the personal stories from the status report and quotes from individuals who were helped by these resource centers, we made posters that bring to the surface who these places aid. By providing a face, quotes, and information about their income and occupation, we build a very relatable image that can help people realize where they can get help and that people like them often do. At the bottom of our poster, we mention that these places serve many individuals, suggesting that going there is normal. We also provide helpful information about how to get there.

When putting all of these components together, we have a poster that demonstrates that getting help with food insecurity is a normal act – something that others like them have done and are extremely thankful for. From far away, one can see the image of the person and the quote about the help they received. This puts the focus on someone who they can connect to. When observed up close, they can get more information about what might make the individual’s current situation similar to theirs. This can help remove any stigma about feeling alone and embarrassed. They can then get a more detailed description about the shelter or pantry including a quick blurb about its proximity and how to get there. The medium of a poster makes gathering all of this information very quick and covert, and is able to paint a clear image for how it can help them.

If we were to take this sketch and expand it, we would interview many more individuals who go to the food shelters near and around Boston, allowing us to build many different profiles for many different people and locations. Pasting a few around an individual shelter or pantry could intercept many who could use help as they commute to work or other places around the city. This way, we would be able to hopefully change the misconceptions they have about food insecurity and the number of people it impacts.

Posters:

Sources:

http://www.projectbread.org/get-the-facts/reports-and-studies/2013-status-report-on-hunger.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/

http://www.projectbread.org/news-and-events/spotlights/spotlight-details/spotlight-on-stephanie-1.html

http://www.mybrotherstable.org/

http://www.fox25boston.com/news/soup-kitchens-like-my-brothers-table-struggling-with-higher-demand-for-services/142733837#.VHM7TecbWEE.facebook

https://www.google.com/amp/s/fox25boston.relaymedia.com/amp/news/rosies-places-helps-veteran-find-housing-after-addiction/478231190

What’s (Not) for Dinner?

Brandon Levy, Sean Soni, Mikayla Murphy, Meghan Kokoski

The data say that 700,000 children and adults in Massachusetts don’t have enough food to eat and 40 percent of the food produced in the US each year is wasted. MIT’s dining halls donate excess food to Food for Free, so when MIT students waste food at dining halls, that wasted food could have provided meals to food-insecure individuals via Food for Free’s Family Meals program. We want to tell this story because we think it will encourage MIT students to take smaller portions and reduce food waste, thereby helping both the environment and Food for Free.

Our audience is MIT students who eat in MIT’s dining halls (although our installation could be implemented at any dining hall that donates extra food to Food for Free).

Our goal is to encourage MIT students to waste less food, which not only helps the environment but also helps to feed the hungry by increasing the amount of food MIT’s dining halls can donate to Food for Free.

Our installation shows the number of food-insecure individuals Food for Free’s Family Meals program could feed with the food wasted in MIT dining halls, which donate excess food to Food for Free. Our project uses several sources of data, one of which currently exists and some that we would find or generate ourselves if we implemented this idea. We pulled positive quotes about Food for Free from a database of feedback provided by the organization’s recipients. If we went ahead with this project, we would ask Food for Free to provide data on approximately how much food (by weight) goes into each Family Meal they prepare, so as to accurately calculate how many people Food for Free could feed with the food wasted in MIT’s dining halls. We might also run a short experiment to calculate roughly how much of the food wasted in MIT dining halls could be used instead by Food for Free – specifically, cases where a student could have taken a smaller portion of food, since food refuse like apple cores and discrete food items like burgers and bread that have bites taken out of them would not be useable by Food for Free if they were saved.

MIT students often take excessively large portions given the chance and throw away the uneaten food. Our installation would confront students with the consequences of those actions by displaying the amount of wasted food that an MIT dining hall could have donated to Food for Free and how many people could have been fed with that food. The idea that someone might go hungry because of wasted food at an MIT dining hall provides an emotional punch to our call-to-action (reducing food waste) and, in our opinion, makes it more likely that our message will stick with students and influence their future behavior. The use of photos from Food for Free and quotes from organizations that receive rescued food from the organization also helps to humanize the food-insecure individuals who would benefit if MIT students reduced their food waste, adding additional emotional weight to our message. Finally, the practical tips we provide for reducing food waste will help students take the action we want them to.

Emissions and the Top 5 Countries

Niki Waghani, Divya Goel, Krithi

Looking at the most recent Carbon Dioxide emissions statistics from 2017, we noticed that the top 5 most industrial countries – the United States, Germany, Japan, China, and the United Knigdom – collectively produced more emissions than the rest of the countries on the list combined. The sheer size of the disproportionate impact these five countries demonstrates a blatant lack of concern for the environment. We were shocked, so we decided to go with a data sculpture that was equally shocking.

Our goal is to shock the people of these five countries into realizing that they are part – a big part – of the problem. The tangible call to action would be to encourage them to use public transportation. To do this, our plan is to install our sculpture in the densest city of each of the five countries. This includes London, Shanghai, New York City, Tokyo, and Berlin. The sculpture would be of a wounded bear, painted with each country’s flag, proportional to how much they pollute. The red of the flags is meant to also represent blood. We would have a statement telling how the five countries pollute more than the rest of the world combined. In addition, we would submerge the bear in a tank of colored ice, the amount of each color also representing each country, that would melt day by day to show the bear drowning.

Could MIT Be Partly Underwater by the End of the Century?

By Paul Choi, Miguel Garrido, and Willie Zhu

In 2016, MIT celebrated 100 years in Cambridge. As the Institute reflected on this milestone, it also touted its bold initiatives for the 21^st century and beyond. By most accounts, MIT’s second century in Cambridge will be even brighter than the first.

However, there is one aspect of MIT’s future that is less promising: its home (Cambridge, MA) could face calamitous consequences from climate change in the next century and beyond. Cambridge is situated by Charles River and the ocean, making the low-lying city highly vulnerable to changes in the sea level.

Carbon dioxide emissions cause global temperatures to rise, which in turn cause the polar ice sheets to melt. As a result, sea levels rise, and the first areas to be affected on a large scale are low-lying coastal cities. This is already happening around the world, but the sea levels haven’t risen enough – yet – to impact Cambridge.

But the future will change this quickly. The purpose of our data sculpture is to show our audience (MIT students) in a dramatic but accurate manner (based on scientific estimates) how climate change could impact the MIT campus and Cambridge in the future.

What the Data Say

The data say that the consequences of climate change on the greater Boston area are expected to be far more calamitous than previously thought. According to numerous scientific studies, sea levels could rise by as much as 10 feet in the Boston area by the end of the century. This drastic change in sea levels could mean that as much as 44 percent of Cambridge would be permanently submerged.

Since the MIT campus flanks the Charles River, the Institute would almost certainly be partly underwater (as much as 10 feet) by the end of the century or later, assuming a) current greenhouse gas emission rates remain unchanged; and b) no steps are taken to control sea levels (through geoengineering or other means).

Data Sculpture

To make the impact of climate change as relatable as possible to our target audience (MIT students), we created a 3D model of the MIT Dome and placed it in a plastic cube.

Our data sculpture consists of two interactive steps.

First, we filled the cube with liquid (PowerAde) to the 10-ft mark (in proportion to the Dome model) to illustrate what could happen if we don’t take steps to curb greenhouse gas emissions, raise awareness, or control the rise in sea levels.

The second step involved asking a different but related question: if the sea levels in Cambridge rise by 10 feet, what percentage of dry, habitable land in the city would be underwater? The answer, according to studies, is about 44 percent (the share of population was unavailable). Hence, for this step we changed the scale to the percentage of Cambridge underwater (0 to 100%) and filled the cube to the 44% mark. This represents a different way of looking at the data and reinforces the notion that a sizable share of the city would be permanently submerged due to climate change.

Analysis

We want to tell this story because we believe that a simple sculpture like the submerged MIT Dome building can serve as a powerful symbol to raise awareness and induce action. Climate change is often difficult for people to grasp and act on (regardless of educational levels) because its impacts are distant in both time and space.

Hence, we believe that our data sculpture tells a compelling story because it uses a highly relatable point of reference (the MIT Dome building) for our audience and explains the impacts of climate change in a simple two-step interactive process (sea levels rising and the proportion of the city that would be submerged). By raising awareness with this sculpture, our hope is that the MIT community can take action to fight climate change and protect our campus, city, and planet before it is too late.

Sources:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/11/24/opinion/sunday/what-could-disappear.html?_r=1&

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/06/22/climate-change-could-have-even-worse-impact-boston-than-previously-expected/S6hZ4nDPeUWNyTsx6ZckuL/story.html

https://www.boston.gov/environment-and-energy/climate-ready-boston#spring2016

Float Away with Hubway

By Erick Friis, Sam Resnick, and Sean Soni

The data say that Hubway is often used for short rides of a few miles or less. We want to tell this story because we think people don’t realize that taking these short trips can prevent CO2 emissions and have a meaningful impact on climate change. Our audience is college students, specifically MIT students, and as such we have designed our data sculpture around MIT. We want to encourage MIT students to use Hubway instead of calling an Uber or Lyft. We used the Hubway dataset to look at a few of the most popular Hubway destinations from MIT, and then calculated the mileage between these points. We then calculated the volume of CO2 that a Hubway rider would save by not taking a car on this trip. We then filled giant balloons with helium to represent CO2. The larger the balloon, the more CO2 saved by taking Hubway. Each balloon was tied to its respective route on a giant map of Boston. What makes our treatment so effective is that we do not scale the numbers. If a Hubway trip saves a cubic meter of CO2, its balloon will have a volume of a cubic meter. In this way, our audience can see that even small trips can have a sizeable impact, and they can fully appreciate the size of that impact. Audience engagement is often a key aspect of ensuring an audience remembers your message, so we decided to add an interactive aspect to our data sculpture. We envision our demo being deployed at a booth where it is accessible to MIT students, and we would like to make it memorable and have it generate discussion. Thus, we would ask students what a popular Uber route they take might be. We would then calculate how much CO2 they could save by taking a Hubway instead. If they agree to try out Hubway, we will inflate a giant balloon with that amount of CO2. This is a light-hearted way to encourage students to use Hubway, and has the added benefit of promoting discussion among any students who happen to inquire about the balloon.

Tasting Air Pollution

Tina Quach, Margaret Tian, Tony Zeng, Aina Martinez Zurita

In starting this project, we were initially motivated by the data set collected by the US State Department on the Air Quality Readings in Beijing. While the city is commonly known for it’s bad air quality, we were interested in understanding how the air pollution in Beijing compares with other cities around the world, as well as with the accepted health standards. Is the air quality of Beijing really as bad as people think?

In order to answer this question, we focused on the data collected by the World Health Organization [1] which reports yearly average of different air pollutants (PM 2.5 and 10) in different cities all around the world.

Indeed, this data set confirmed that the air quality in Beijing is extremely unhealthy. The annual mean of particulate matter with diameters of 2.5 microns or smaller (PM 2.5) in 2014 was 85 ug/m3, over 8 times the recommended limit of 10 ug/m3. According to several studies [2], an annual average of only 35 ug/m3 is associated with 15% higher long-term mortality risk with respect to the recommended guideline. Given the high health impact such a high average of air pollutants, we wanted our story to convey the damaging effects of air pollution and the importance of the efforts to combat it.

We were also interested in creating an interactive experience that was different and surprising, and also communicated our message effectively. And so, we decided to use food to portray our data.

We collected the annual averages of PM 2.5 for several representative cities. Each city is represented by a set of brownies, and there is also a set of brownies that represents the ideal air quality standard. While all brownies look similar, we added salt to each batch proportional to the air quality of the city they represent. Brownies from cities with a bad air quality have higher level of salt (to uncomfortable levels) while the ideal air quality brownie has no added salt. As well, each set of brownies is accompanied by a glass of milk. If the taste a specific city salty brownie is uncomfortable, we invite the viewer to drink the corresponding glass of milk. The milk in the glass however, is proportional to the efforts that city is making towards clean air policies and measures. Finally, if the amount of milk provided by the city is not enough to clear the bad taste, we also provide a jug of milk. The cartoon is covered with a label explaining measures that a person can take independently to improve air quality.

We envision our target audience as young kids. Our display would provide a way for them to learn about the impacts of air pollution and the importance of air quality in a tactile and fun way. For example, it could be part of an activity at a science museum, or a display on a science fair. We believe that the direct experience of something that we expect to enjoy (Aka. a sweet brownie) being damaged by the air pollution (aka. salt) is a very effective way of communicating the importance of air quality. After all, who doesn’t enjoy a good brownie!

[1] http://www.who.int/phe/health_topics/outdoorair/databases/cities/en/
[2] http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/69477/1/WHO_SDE_PHE_OEH_06.02_eng.pdf

The Olympic Reduction

Meghan Kokoski, Mikayla Murphy, Kimberly Yu, Kevin Zhang

The Beijing air quality data shows that there was a drastic increase in air quality during the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. We wanted to tell this story because although Beijing normally has poor and sometimes even dangerous air quality, they were able to increase air quality to safe levels while hosting the Olympic Games. This change did not occur naturally and was a direct result of government intervention. The data does not show a permanent improvement in the air quality in Beijing, but it does prove that through laws and the will of the government, there can be a noticeable change in air quality.

We wanted to demonstrate the changes Beijing made during the Olympics in the hopes of encouraging better policy to protect air quality. Our audience is the inhabitants of Los Angeles, particularly those interested in health and environmental issues. A larger scale of the sketch would be set up in a public setting in the city of Los Angeles. We would play the part of an activist for clean air, using our data sculpture to show how government can play a large role in creating clean air. In addition to the physical model, the accompanying screen would specify the clean air improvements in Beijing made during the Olympics, as well as the adverse effects each pollutant has on the environment and one’s health. Ultimately, the data visualization would encourage participants to push their government officials to implement policies promoting cleaner air.

Los Angeles is an appropriate location for our visualization because it often has unsafe levels of air pollution and has the worst air quality of any large city in the US. They are also in contention to host the 2024 Summer Olympic Games, so people will relate to the Olympic rings.

We started by analyzing the Beijing air quality data provided by the US State Department and noticed an unusual increase in air quality in August. Based on the timeline, we hypothesized that it may have been related to the 2008 Summer Olympics. Intrigued, we did some additional research and found a study conducted by The Hong Kong Polytechnic University which looked at specific levels of pollutants before and during the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Our physical model is based on the information in this study.