The following week I was assigned to write a research report for a design challenge. The topic I chose to research was Climate change as it is an issue that impacts everyone globally and has been increasing exponentially over the last couple of months. Hence, I found it a great topic to learn more about for this design challenge. However, the topic is quite a broad one and so I had to narrow down which parts of climate change I wanted to go over. There are a few main ones such as effects on effects on the globe, effects on the vegetation and effects on animals. Each of these categories fills a wide spectrum of issues happening worldwide. I decided to focus more on Biodiversity how that is being affected and why it is crucial to learn more about it.  

                The main topics I decided to write about were how global warming causes animals to relocate and how it sped up their growth phases. I also dove into how carbon dioxide emissions not only affect the climate through the excess amount of it in the atmosphere but lead to sinking into the ocean, leading to ocean acidification. Which, harms marine life due to the high pH levels in the water that are not healthy for aquatic animals. I always knew the common terms like, “habitat loss” and “ocean acidification” were commonly used but never quite understood what that meant and how it is being caused. Thanks to the research I conducted I was able to learn that carbon dioxide does indeed harm marine life with excess amount of it in the ocean. Also, warmer temperatures cause animals to locate on higher altitudes plains.

                Ultimately, this research helped me find concrete evidence and information regarding climate change on Biodiversity. With this data I have collected I can use it to create a design challenge where my initial thought was to create a post-dystopian world, you play to help restore the world from the damages it caused. My idea was to design a narrative-driven story in a third-person setting, with the endangered animals that are at risk. As the player, you would be fighting off invasive species or finding new homes for these animals. I feel like there are a lot of ways I can go about this topic; hence I will continue to research more on how I can define a playable space based on climate change. 

This is a great topic to research, especially the biodiversity aspect of climate change and how you can take the research and put it into and introduce it to players through a game. This is the first time I'm hearing about the ocean acidification and the carbon emissions sinking into the ocean, this realization of climate change's current effects is crucial for more people to discover and start caring about. As a player I would love to learn of different actionable steps I can take individually to help protect the animals from climate change!

Hey Janna, great research on this topic. You seem to have a very thorough understanding of the causes and effects of climate change. Your game idea is also very interesting. I love the aspect of having to find new homes for the animals that have nowhere left to go. Perhaps you could turn that into a sort of zoo simulator where the habitats of the animals change similar to real life, and the player has to manage where the animals can migrate to without invading other species. Either way, I can't wait to learn more about climate change from your future game :)