Brainstorming project aspects re: the drought in Calif.

drought-project-ideas.md

"Gaming the drought" aka Drought Tracker

Our pitch is to create a "data-driven" narrative game that allows a user to assume a role, work their way through scenarios related to the drought, water conservation and water consumption, learn from their choices and share their results with their network of friends.

####Flow of the game

1. User would choose a role and answer two or three questions that would further personalize the role
   • Ideas for roles:
     • Homeowner
     • Owner of an industrial business
     • Farmer
     • Restaurant owner
     • School superintendent
   • Goal of the questions is to arrive at a particular archetype:
     • Conserver
     • Waster
     • Compromiser
   • Example questions:
     • Number of employees, students, customers
     • Type of crops planted, food served, etc
     • Zip code/neighborhood/location
2. User is faced with a choice in a scenario:
   • Example choices:
     • Use water sparingly
     • Use water excessively
     • Make a compromise in another area
   • Example scenarios:
     • Mandatory rations are in place. Choose how to spend your water allotment
       • Similar to a state budget slashing interactive.
     • Your business is offered a discount if it can reduce its water consumption by 30 percent. Where do the cuts come from?
     • What "water usage" activities will you do today:
       • Based on answer user sees how much it costs
       • Shower for X number of minutes
       • Run X number of loads in dishwasher
       • Wash X number of loads of laundry
3. As the user works through scenarios we offer links to resources, conservation tips from experts, facts about water usage, anecdotes and methods to participate in a discussion about water use in Los Angeles.
   • Historical water use in zip codes will allow people to see how they compare to their neighbors
   • Tips from expperts could be personalized based on the scenario
   • Ideas for resources are below

####Ideas for sources of data

• Academics who create data values for how much water is consumed for each use: toilets, sink tap running, large load of laundry
• Solicit our audience to keep a water usage diary
• Gather and clean data that shows historial water use by zip code
• Crowdsource selected data points from user water bills

####Ideas for complimentary resources

• A user's guide to understanding the water bill
• A user's guide to what happens when… you flush the toilet, run the dishwasher, use outdoor sprinklers
• A mechanism to share water conservation tips with others
• A water conservation council

####Designing a Game

• Make your game fun
• Your game must have an objective
• The result of the game should not be predetermined
• Give people a reason to play again.

####Inspiration

• Budget Hero
• Budget Puzzle: You Fix the Budget
• The Candidate
• Income Upshot
• Hairnet Heros
• Heartsaver
• Creating Games for Journalism
• John Osborn's Newsgame Directory

• I like the idea to Gamify; is there a way to make it personalized? For instance, the gamer must answer a few questions beforehand: How many showers do you take a week? For how long? Do you water your lawn? Etc. Then, the gamer tries to save say 20 percent of what they are currently using.
• Going off of that idea, I think it would be useful if we could help folks easily add up how much water they use per week/month since our target consumer doesn't have a clue. Then when we determine how much they use, we can give conservation tips on how they can cut that 20 percent suggested by the governor.
• What will LA look like in 10 years? Can we create some sort of interactive graphic that tells a story of a water-less LA. What will LA look like if we were to continue in a drought without conservation?
• Who is doing it right? Can we create a map/chart/graph showing how much water cities in California are using vs saving (and also, what are they paying)?

I also really like the idea of finding a way to gamify this. Ideally, I'd push to add a PIN element as they did with Budget Hero (http://www.marketplace.org/topics/economy/budget-hero) or we could take this opportunity to create an educational game a la Marketplace Income Upshot (http://www.marketplace.org/sites/default/iframes/income_upshot/). If that is beyond our bandwidth, we could do a simpler maze-style game like the ones where you have to keep connecting pipes to keep the water from spilling then have water facts pop up between levels.

Additionally, I like the idea of providing real world tips. Don't tell me to cut 20 percent of my water. Show me how I realistically could. Could we create a gallery of examples of what people have already done with before and after photos and facts? We probably have a big enough pool of folks, between do-gooder celebrities and our PIN responses.

I love the users guide idea when it comes to what individual water decisions mean and add up to. With GAD, we talked about how much people think they know versus what they actually know—and the notion that one person's changed lifestyle couldn't make a difference.

Comparing and contrasting different locations is great idea, too. Molly already has a project in the works comparing Southern California to Australia, and there are people we could call on all over the world to flesh out a world map of water conservation and trivia.

Lastly, I'd love to turn all those PIN sources into a sort of council we go back to throughout the project's life. We don't have to use them in every story, but we can continue the conversation with them, taking direction from what they're saying. We could even divide them into different groups and have a few different conversations at once.

Anyone remember that one web tool where you could balance the state budget (Sac Bee? Times?) You had to make your own cuts using a slider, I think. The manual element of that really appealed to me because I could see it was a tweaking situation - shave a little here, a little there.

If we're going to help people track their own water use I hope we can be really exhaustive about it. How many songs can you sing in your head while you shower? 10 minutes x what does your shower head look like [rate of water flow] = gallons of water.

A cutting edge thing to do in LA enviro circles is to think about/take into account geography. We've covered this, but a guy at UCLA has downscaled global climate models to predict temperature changes and precipitation changes in the region, and what is interesting about THAT are all of the differences from zip code to zip code. Maybe there's a way to incorporate a chronological element into whatever we do. Like, if we know it's going to be hot in the valley, and we know there's going to be less rain in your rain barrel, what does that do to your water demand/availability if you live in the valley for 20 more years?

I love the global comparison, obviously.

Moving original ideas from above to the comments...

• Gather data about historical water use in zip codes and allow people to see how they compare.
• Gamify water conservation and award/subtract points for certain behavior. Plus five points for saving your shower water. Plus 15 points for submitting your water bill data points this month. Negative 5 points for washing your driveway.
• Mechanism for sharing water conservation tips. Kind of an educational component.
• A users-guide to understanding the water bill.
• A users-guide to understanding what happens when you flush the toilet, turn on the shower, run the dishwasher, etc. How much water is used. How long does it take to heat up? Is it better to run it a bit in high or longer on low?

One observation that we learned from Income Upshot (and as a corollary, from our Who Gives? philanthropy project: http://www.marketplace.org/sites/default/iframes/philanthropy/ ...

If you're going to gamify, you almost want to make it a way for a user to find out more about themselves -- or their neighbors/friends -- not as a way to 'play a game'.

So, here its almost like you want to ask people questions about:

• How much they mow their lawn
• How much they shower/bathe
• How many people in their household go to the bathroom how often.
• Etc etc.

And then tell them where they fall in the spectrum of water users. (maybe current and past)

And then give them tips about how to improve their standing.