Explaining the Climate and Economy:
A Class Reflection Essay
Eric Rawn—CS247i—Dec 10, 2019
In my mind, this class had a rather succinct problem statement: “The world is an endlessly nuanced and complex place — how do we get people to understand systems and make informed decisions about them?” The answers to that question, at least the ones we were given in this class, seem to be in three categories: conceptual (how can we frame and synthesize information in ways people will easily acquire?), formal (what are the best ways to order and organize information?), and structural (how might we design a system or structure which delivers this information in an effective way?). While ultimately these are all at play whenever we communicate information, it might be helpful to think of them separately for reflection and critique.
We began with conceptual explanations: concept modeling, secondary research, and a presentation of a topic as a model in the form of P1. Through the design process of ideating and synthesizing in P1, by far the most useful part were the interviews — they gave us rich information which ended up guiding us well in our project. While our original topic had been corporate lobbying, our interviews and research organically led us to an issue that presented more depth and opportunity — most of the liberal, environmentally minded people we interviewed didn’t realize that renewable energy was not only competitive with fossil fuels, it was more financially viable. This topic (and audience) excited us because many of the people who held this false impression wanted their opinion to be false. P1 was a lesson in polish — although our underlying idea was exciting, it struggled to come through due to formal issues (hierarchy, color, contrast, etc). We should have held ourselves to a higher standard of visual quality earlier on, which would have allowed us to test earlier and have more time to respond to that feedback.
Next, we discussed formal techniques: card sorting, CRAP, message architecture, design principles, etc. We wrapped up these concepts in P2. The most valuable part of P2 for me was the translation of our message architecture into the website. I enjoyed thinking about why some websites felt authoritative on climate opposed to others. Developing a visual style which felt like it conveyed the rhetorical strategies we targeted was also a fun problem to consider. While learning the process of cardsorting and site mapping was valuable as well, the actual execution of the website felt less critical, but perhaps that was because I was already familiar with graphic design.
Our third project dealt with structure — that games can provide ways to engage with content and provide understanding more effectively than websites or explainers. We discussed formal elements, the MDA(O) framework, and discussed a small portion of Bogost’s view of games, play, and fun. Effective serious games almost always require strong models and synthesis of a topic and are communicated through strong formal elements, and so P3 was a good chance to practice all three in a single design exercise. My team selected the ambitious task of modeling the nuance and competing interests involved in implementing renewable energy worldwide. To frame our process in terms Bogost would appreciate, we made something that was originally needlessly complex but was deep enough to warrant taking too seriously (it had ‘fun’ in it). Our journey of iterating, once the original system had been conceptualized (which was an iterative process in itself, but was mostly theoretical as we playtested the game in our heads), was to isolate the part of the game that was truly deep and fun, cut the rest, and make what was left easily communicable and approachable. One of our primary lenses of design was to step through the game in our heads and lay out the choices available to a player. At each stage, the choices available should have been viable (there were no choices that strictly dominated other choices), impactful (they have consequences on the game-state), and interesting (they involve a tension, trade-off, or a privilege of a specific style of play). While the game is certainly not perfect, I think our design methodology was an effective one and led us in the right direction. We could have considered a more theoretical approach in explicitly mapping out the system as a large interconnected model to begin, but I think there was value in stumbling onto what worked and what didn’t through doing. For example, many of the features which weren’t successful were incorporated into other mechanics. Perhaps if we had modeled the game explicitly, we would have instead just done away with them first before discovering that they were interesting despite not having any explicit counter-balance. While we struggled with balance issues up to the end, all of our testing experience points to minor fixes in numbers and on-boarding of new players to viable strategies instead of issues with the system, and so I think our system design was a success even if the game required further iteration.
Perhaps this is my personal bias, but if I were to venture constructive feedback for this class, it would be in terms of theoretical foundation. What does it mean to understand anything at all? What is the difference between understanding something, being convinced of something, or being led to believe something? In my research for P1, I was able to take a brief trip down this road (many psychologists and political scientists have studied specifically why people think what they do about climate change and renewable energy) — I wish I could have built a stronger theoretical foundation for what I was making through engagement with this material. While interviews were helpful in guiding us along, earlier research not only into the issue itself but existing research on how and why people acquire their beliefs on said issue would have helped us figure out what questions to answer through interviews and which to answer through existing research. I think a theoretical foundation would have helped me draw larger themes out of this class or move towards a framework for solving new problems of understanding in radically different formats than those covered in the class. A theoretical engagement would also help ground the themes of this class — what is it about models that make them effective? What does it mean for a model to be rhetorical? What is formal clarity, abstracted from a specific medium? Why does visual hierarchy actually make visual information easier to digest? What do games actually do when they ask us to engage in a system? What kinds of rhetorical strategies can they employ? How do they work on us?
While I see the value in developing heuristics through doing, theoretical engagement might open the door to different kinds of critical engagement with the material — where do heuristics fail to apply? Are there situations where it’s appropriate to do the opposite of what a heuristic suggests? When should I know to adapt or bend heuristics, and how?
I’ve certainly developed a set of design heuristics through this class which will be very valuable to me, only a few of which I’ve been able to articulate. Thank you so much for a great quarter. I’m very glad I took this class!
