A Call to Action

In the second week, we focussed deeply and had in-depth research on climate change. Much as we were eager to dive into this global phenomenon, Chrissy cautioned us to not bury ourselves into piles of research as this would somewhat depress us in the long run due to the sensitivity of what we would find. Our objective was to find ways of designing an engaging and interactive experience that to the most part avoided repetition of the already existing campaigns. We explored various aspects of climate change, familiarised ourselves with what a transmedia experience was and made headway into identifying our target audience.

Climate change research

Through sharing several design inspiration concepts and examples related to climate change and environmental, we focused on inspiring people to adopt better environmental habits through interactive experiences to create a meaningful impact on behavioural change.

Zooming into why it is hard to care about Climate Change

We dug deeper into finding out why people may care less about this global phenomenon. In a video that explores this further, They narrate the following under the video description: "Bringing up climate change is one tried and true way to ruin a dinner party — and leave people feeling helpless and apathetic. But it doesn’t have to be that way, if we change how we communicate. So let’s talk, about how we talk, about climate change."

They further provide that "We’re destroying our environment at an alarming rate but it doesn’t need to be this way. Our channel explores the shift towards an eco-friendly world — and challenges our ideas about what dealing with climate change means. We look at the big and the small: What we can do and how the system needs to change. Every Friday we’ll take a truly global look at how to get us out of this mess."

We proceed to revisit our brief after our occassional tutorials with Tonicha, and realised that we should instead focus on communication through a "transmedia experience" rather than changing people’s perpectives about Climate Change pr trying to get everyone to understand it. As a result, we opted to target awareness and interest in climate change among various groups starting with interviews we had with people on and off campus and online questionnaires.

Here are audios from the interviews Jakob and Marty held with-in London College of Communication premises:

For the results of our interviews to be truly diverse, we interviewed people from off-campus too. Analysing the data, We made a , we made a discovery that at least one in three people in the public was not aware of Climate Change and its effects on the planet.

Unfortunately, despite presenting proof of identification that we were students from University of the Arts London, we were unable to obtain any recording or media from the interview sessions we had with the public in open space.

We conducted further research later on into carbon emissions and discovered the greatest causes to be decreasing soil health, fossil fuels amongst emissions by human and animal activity.

Soil health

The impact of soil on carbon emissions was a great discovery for us. We discovered that soil inhabits organisms that allow storage and turning of carbondioxide and the more we used fertlisers, the more we brought destrcution to them. And since soil produces food that people cannot live without, we agreed it would be a good access point to remind people of the importance of protecting the environment and the seriousness of climate change.

Based on the research data we had collected so far, we made prototypes from cardboard that envisioned an emmersive experience for a user that would on press of a button transport them into a certain time to witness the effects of Climate Change on the planet. We used cardboard to depict wall enclosures and magazine cutouts to simulate the positioning of the screen displays.

We realised after the presentaion that our understanding of a trans-media experience was inaccurate which means is a technique of telling a single story or story experience across multiple platforms and formats using current digital technologies. Instead, we had mostly directed our efforts on delivering media through interactive screen. We explored the different transmedia kinds such as websites, games, videos, posters, installations and social media in hope of finding a befitting answer.

We also had a chance to discuss as a whole about what we thought of each other’s design direction. Disclaimer: I am virtually positioned in the empty seat. Had to take this photo :)

Here was the feedback from the presentation

• Where is the transmedia experience?
• Narrow down the topic further.
• Scale, make it bigger.
• Think deeply about who you are designing for.

We could have saved quite a lot more time had we stuck to following the course brief than trying to internalise the film scripts and make design meaning out of them and basing the first week’s research on all global causes. All this meant more time that we honestly didn’t have!

Transmedia Storytelling on Wikipedia.

Understanding the true implications of the Food we throw away by Domestic Streamers.

Why most People don’t care about Climate Change by Palmer Owyoung, 2022.