Team Twilight| Scanning for Lifeforms
Awards & Nominations
Team Twilight has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!
Most Inspirational
Scanning for Lifeforms
Survivors: An interactive AR species survival game
Summary
Created by the Lower East Side Girls' Club, Survivors: Save the Earth is an interactive AR species survival game. Using NASA, JAXA, and ESA climate data, the game provides a rewarding and informative way for Earth citizens of all ages to learn about the impact of humanity on biodiversity and species survival.Playing as an endangered animal of their choice, players learn the true impact of various forms of pollution and habitat loss. To build empathy and illustrate this, they are shown satellite imagery of the play area that shows real environmental data.Players are incentivized to then take social, personal, and nonpartisan political action to address environmental issues.
How We Addressed This Challenge
Background
Our Team
The Lower Eastside Girls Club (LESGC) has been “Opening Doors, Empowering Women, and Building Community Girl by Girl” since 1996. We run programs that serve girls and young women throughout New York’s five boroughs. Our team was led by two high school girls and mentored by two professional volunteers from the software and design industries.
Our Inspiration
Inspired by rapid extinction in the natural world, our shared love of animals, and the power of modern smartphones, our team wanted to create something informative and engaging that would have a tangible real-world impact.
What We Made and How It Works
The Problem
How might we educate users about how humanity affects species survival and encourage them to take action?
The Solution
An interactive AR species survival game called Survivors: Save the Earth. We chose this name to communicate the dire environmental situation that many species face. View clickable prototype >
How it Works: Building Knowledge and Empathy
Using data from ESA Sentinel and NASA climate data, the game provides a rewarding and informative way for Earth citizens of all ages to learn about the impact of humanity on biodiversity and species survival.
Playing as an endangered animal of their choice, players learn the true impact of various forms of pollution and habitat loss. Their goal is to clean up pollution, gather survival resources, and unlock planets. To build empathy and illustrate this, they are shown satellite imagery of the play area that shows real environmental data and how the area has changed as a result of human influence.
How it Works: Creating real-world impact
Players earn points from each level to clear a virtual night sky of smog and unlock planets powered by the NASA Solar System Exploration platform. To accelerate this, they are incentivized to take social, personal, and nonpartisan political action to address environmental issues.
Players engage with an in-game web app (lo-fi prototype) powered by Google's Civic Information API that allows them to enter their ZIP code to receive contact information for local politicians and receive points for sharing environmental concerns on social media, learning about local recycling and cleanup opportunities, and demanding decisive action from their elected officials.
Summary Presentation presented to local judges
What We Hope To Achieve
We hope to help foster a new generation of environmentally conscious citizens who see beyond typically narrow climate change narratives about temperature and CO2. We want to foster a more global, systematic, and empathic understanding of climate change, negative human influence, and their effects on biodiversity and species survival.
Most importantly, we want to empower Earth citizens of all ages to take action to preserve our shared environment and protect biodiversity.
How We Developed This Project
Why We Chose This Challenge
We were inspired to choose this challenge by the desire to have a real-world impact. We care about our natural world and want to inspire others to take care of our shared, living world. We also like to have fun and think that a game like this is a great teaching tool.
Our Approach: Student-led and highly collaborative
- Our talented teenage product managers from LESGC drove the ideation process and we designed the core features and goals of the app.
- We split into two sub-teams: The first handled research, coding, and space technology integration. The second handled usability, visual design, and prototyping.
- We worked together in Figma to hone our minimum viable product and its look and feel.
- We iterated on our design and watched our feature set gracefully expand.
- We presented our prototype to female leaders in the tech sector and integrated their feedback.
Our Tools: Simple and streamlined
Software
- Google Drive
- Figma
- Glitch.me
- Sentinel Playground
- Movebank
Coding Languages
- HTML
Hardware
- Mac and Windows PC's
Challenges
- Extremely limited working time of less than 7 hours total due to our young product managers' schedules and need for healthy sleep.
- Realtime collaboration and sharing design assets outside of Figma.
- Internet connection dropouts.
- Avoiding feature bloat and maintaining a truly minimal viable prototype.
Achievements
- Having less than 7 hours to work and still finding time to teach the girls about HTML, API calls, and Figma.
- Empowering BIPOC girls to express themselves through technology and become leaders in the field.
- Moving from static design to clickable prototype in under 1 hour.
- Reading academic research, testing assumptions, and becoming climate change scholars in less than 7 hours!
How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project
JAXA
- Global Change Observation Mission 1st-Water "SHIZUKU"
- sea ice data used to design arctic habitat game levels and inform players about ice melt
NASA
- NSIDC/NASA Arctic sea ice minimum data
- sea ice data used to design arctic habitat game levels and inform players about ice melt
- Terra MODIS imagery
- deforestation and reforestation imagery hypothetically used to illustrate human impact and potential for environmental recovery
- Various NASA and ESA data sources accessed by Movebank
- We would hypothetically use Imagery and data from Movebank superimposed on the player's environment to illustrate how humans have affected species survival, biodiversity, and migration patterns
ESA
- Sentinel-2 L1C IR imagery - natural color, vegetation index
- imagery used to hypothetically illustrate human impact on species and natural environment at player location and where they can have a positive impact on the environment
Project Demo
Data & Resources
Data Sources
JAXA
- Global Change Observation Mission 1st-Water "SHIZUKU"
NASA
- NSIDC/NASA Arctic sea ice minimum data
- Terra MODIS imagery
- Various NASA and ESA data sources accessed by Movebank
ESA
- Sentinel-2 L1C IR imagery - natural color, vegetation index
Design Assets
Planet Icon
https://dryicons.com/icon/saturn-icon-5242
Star Cluster Icon
https://dryicons.com/icon/cluster-of-stars-icon-5260
Cloud Icon
https://dryicons.com/icon/cloud-multimedia-icon-9955
All other icons provided by icons8.
Buttons and coloring created by Peter Berexa, who is part of Team Twilight
Ice background from Dragon Raja, used under Fair Use provisions
Desert background: "woman of the desert" by rickredds is licensed with CC BY-NC-SA 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/