Road to Sustainability

Kunyi Li, Caroline Liu, Margaret Sands, and Arturo Chavez

The data say that fuel economy for consumer vehicles varies dramatically. Building upon the knowledge of CO2 emissions in our last sketch, we were interested to take a closer look at the heterogeneity in efficiency across cars models on the market, one of the leading sources of CO2. It is common knowledge that auto emissions contribute significantly to pollution, but it is less clear that people incorporate fuel economy and CO2 emission properly into their car purchasing decision. The fact is that some cars have dramatically better fuel economy than others (Toyota Prius travels >50 MPG in the city while Dodge Charger travels only 19 MPG). The long-term effect of this difference can be significant, but it’s gradual nature makes it hard for people to realize it at the dealership.   

Inspired by the New York Times’ article “You Draw It: How Family Income Predicts Children’s College Chances,” we wanted to engage people to estimate the consequences of fuel economy. We ask the player to make a concrete predictions about the impact of their preferred car coupled with their lifestyle choices. The primary audience is young car buyers, likely purchasing their first new car. We envision this interactive game embedded into kbb.com, consumerreports.com, or cars.usnews.com (and their mobile app versions) to best capture our tech-inclined target audience.

Many CO2 infographics come across as scolding people for their environmentally unfriendly choices, but we wanted to take a different approach. Our aim is to coach players to develop a precise intuition about the consequences of their transportation choices. Then people can make a conscious choice with complete information. The interactive game structure where players make guesses and the game responds with feedback makes for excellent training to understand their own impact. We designed the prediction prompts to involve minimal math and hope the users will enjoy the estimation challenge. We are calling car buyers to choose consciously about the real costs related to the models people choose.

 

Polar Jenga – How long can you keep the ice from melting?

By Marc Exposito, Scott Gilman, and Kalli Retzepi

The data say that the Arctic is melting quickly, which threatens many species that live there. We wanted to tell this story because the Arctic is already experiencing the effects of climate change more than almost anywhere else on the planet, and yet it’s easy to ignore what’s happening there as it feels so removed from our world. Our audience is students in their 20s or 30s in Cambridge – we specifically imagined that this could be something students could play with friends in the Muddy Charles. Our goal is to provoke them to take some small actions to combat climate change that are possible on a student budget and schedule.

We made a modified version of Jenga to accomplish these goals. We added a deck of shuffled cards to the game. Each turn, instead of just removing one block, a player draws a card and follows the instructions. Some of the cards are factual – for example, “In 2017, the area of Arctic summer sea ice was the second-lowest ever recorded – behind only 2007. Remove two blocks!” Others involve polling the group about their carbon-emitting habits, and taking action based on the result –  for example, “Ask each player if they turned the lights off before they left home today? If all of you did, congratulations. Otherwise, shame on you – remove a block!” Finally, a third category prompts players to take action and allows them to skip a turn; for example, one card asks players to call their Massachusetts state representative to voice support for a statewide carbon tax.

A sample of cards from Polar Jenga

Jenga’s end, when the tower falls, is symbolic of the Arctic melting. It’s also a simple, widely known game that can easily engage our audience without much effort on their part. Finally, there is already a dynamic of collective responsibility in Jenga – there’s no winner as the players are essentially working together to keep the tower up, and the loser is whoever lets the group down, which appropriately frames the latter two card types that are based on individual action for the collective good.

With more time, we would definitely invest more time into the design of the Jenga pieces, making them feel more Polar. The game is also very flexible, and we would experiment with adapting it to other contexts – for example, developing a giant version to play outside or in Lobby 10 during Earth Day. It would also be cool to make giant Jenga pieces out of ice and play it at a winter festival. The cards themselves are very flexible, and you could easily add new actions based on different contexts – for example, activist groups could add cards about fundraising for their organizations or signing a petition.

All I Want for Christmas is Clean Air

In China, over 1.3 billion people have high health risks associated with exposure to ambient fine particulate matter (PM2.5). The data says that the air quality in major cities in China exceeds the World Health Organization (WHO) Air Quality Guidelines (AQG). However, it is hard for people in the U.S. to experience that. 

About the PM2.5, I experience it myself. This is a real story:

In 2015, during the fall break, I went back to my hometown, a city near Beijing. Unfortunately, I experienced the days with severe PM2.5 pollution. I could hardly see the building next to me. I need to hold my breath and reduce the outdoor time. Even worse, my flight back to Guangzhou was canceled.

We want to tell the story because we want people who have never been in a city with severe PM 2.5 air pollution to be able to imagine what it is like to breathe in such an environment. In order to show that, we choose 3 cities: Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu to form our story and create snow globes for each city. Each snow globe is filled with a certain amount of glitter to represent the 2017 average PM 2.5 amounts in each city normalized to the area of each city. This visualization would be an interactive experience. First, from the information box, the audience could know answer the question themselves. Then, we let the audience guess and rank the cities 1 to 4 from most to least polluted. Finally, the audience could shake the snow globes to see what the air pollution looks like visually and the answer is revealed as they pick up the globes.

The goal of this visualization is to quantify air pollution measured in PM 2.5 and to educate people about what PM2.5 really is. Many people are aware that air pollution is bad, but they are not familiar with the concept of PM 2.5. The particles in the air do not make it harder to breathe, but instead, breathing in a lot of these particles into the body can result in serious health effects.

We chose the presentation in the form of snow globes because it is an item that most people are familiar with and the reveal when the globes are shaken provide a nice surprise element. The black glitter was chosen to represent PM 2.5 because the metaphor of black particles as hazardous to health gives off a warning sign.

We would like this visualization to be an exhibit in a museum where people can interact with the snow globes. The snow globes are relatively small and the skyline is not easy to see clearly, so ideally we would have live video cameras that project onto a large screen, so when people pick up and shake the snow globes, they can see an enlarged version of the snow globes on a big screen and can clearly see what the skylines look like covered in the black glitter. Furthermore, if we could gather more data, we can make globes for more cities in China or even cities around the world.

What is PM2.5?

https://blissair.com/what-is-pm-2-5.htm

By Haley Meisenholder, Jay Dev, Yihang Sui, Kunyi Li

Beijing needs to breathe!

The data say that Beijing’s pollution has been getting a lot better over the past few years, but is still a lot higher than their target of 30 microgram per meter cube. We want to tell this story because it tells a story that’s not the common narrative: yes the pollution is bad, but it is getting a lot better.

Our audience is Americans interested in China.

There are a few interesting notes about the data: the seasonality is very strong, with highs in Winter. A little research suggests the idea that coal burnt in northern China produce chemicals that are then brought to Beijing by the wind patterns.

We tried looking for the familiar narrative of better pollution levels during the 2008 Olympics, and did find that the levels were much lower than they were for the same time future years.

However, what caught our eye was the dramatic improvement over the past few years, where the worst part of the year is similar to the best of previous years. This is a dramatic reduction in the pollution of the city!

Focusing in on that narrative, we worked to find a sculpture that could convey the discomfort of the pollution, while also leaving the audience with a sense of hope for the future. We settled on using masks that the viewer would wear on the way in – the pollution is still terrible after all, while displaying the yearly pollution levels in stacks of masks.

Margaret, Rikhav, Olivia

Breathing Beijing

How does it feel to breathe in Beijing? We are exploring the US Department of State “Mission China” Air Quality dataset in an effort to recreate the experience of breathing with varying degrees of difficulty.

We are grouping the data into three categories: good air quality, moderate, and low.  With each category, a different breathing experience aims to be simulated using different straws.

We believe this is a powerful physical data experience because it is simple in execution but powerful in action. The simple act of trying to breathe through different straws re-creates the experience of having different levels of breathing difficulty. This directly connects a person in this exhibition with a person living in Beijing that has different breathing difficulties due to the air pollution levels.

In order to differentiate the air pollution levels, we have used colors and the diameter of the straw.

This is the data for 2016:

Green color – Hours where measured air pollution is less than 100: 6720 hours, 76.8% of total hours for the year

Yellow color – Hours where measured air pollution is between 101 and 200: 1418 hours, 16.2% of total hours for the year

Red color – Hours where measured air pollution is greater than 200: 617 hours, 7% of total hours for the year.\

Team: Kallirroi Retzepi, Helen K. Bailey, Mitchel L Myers, and Marc Exposito