ONE
Do you relate?
The Detroit Health experiment
PROPOSAL
I intend to unveil the underlying health problems within the Metro-Detroit community, and demonstrate how your current standing (race, wealth, geographic location, and gender) in life has an impact on the health and health-conscious of an individual. I believe this is worth pursuing given that there is a debate on the actual need of good health coverage and understanding. I hope that people will come to the realization of how bad some of the lives of the unfortunate are really like. As well as that there are some people in our country that die because they live in an impoverished area and/or cannot afford to live.
GENRE ANALYSIS
In order for this to work out well, I think you have to be able to unlace your shoes and place yourself in someone else’s shoes. It is very difficult for someone to do that, as they might assume it would never happen to them, or they believe they will have an idea of how to overcome certain obstacles the person-of-interest is going through. With this in mind, I believe the best way of overcoming this challenge, but still achieving the goal of putting someone in someone else’s shoes, is by using current innovations. For this experiment, I will be looking to using an interactive story plot, in which the user will have the opportunity to choose his or her own characteristics such as age, geographic location in Detroit, gender, and race. All of these factors will be integrated into an interactive journey that shows you (based on your factors) what your life would be like. In short, this is like a life simulator, but in with more of a health focus. Interactive storytelling is used in multiple industries ranging from the online game industry (Secrets: Games of Choices) to even in the business world (teaching students the impact of money and how spending it on certain luxuries leads to certain consequences). I find this the most appealing of all genres as it would be user-friendly and much more effective than a regular article, which people may find boring and lose sight of what the true motive of the article really is about. The most popular and usual way of doing this is through a self-made app (which costs money); however, there are people that also achieve the same outcome by using an online platform such as Twine or inklewriter. It is hard to know you actually achieved your goal without feedback from the user. My goal is to make people more aware of the fact there are people with a very weak health-conscious due to their current standing in life, as well as understand the impact some outside organizations have on this current standing. With this in mind, if I am able to talk to these users after the simulation and check up on them in a certain period of time, I will be able to see what they have done health-wise for themselves or for their communities. If they have done something positive for their community like create a community garden, incorporating a certain amount of fruits or veggies in their diet, or even joining people in protest for certain health conditions within the community, then I would know I have reached excellence.
SKETCH DRAFT
As I mentioned earlier, I will be using an interactive story mode creator, and I plan to have multiple paths based on the certain factors you choose. You will start out with a few required payments in the simulation such as car insurance and food, then you will be required to pick your race. After you pick your race, you will decide on where you will be living, and this (alongside your decision on race) will determine your earnings per year. You will then have the option to choose your actual distance from work (farther or closer). These decisions will end up deciding your whole health outcome, as there is always a cost and benefit for choosing either option. You will then, after knowing how much you currently can spend per month, be able to spend on health insurance (Good, Average, cheap, and no insurance). Depending on what options you chose, this could either improve or worsen your life. After choosing all these options, the story will begin, and you will have to go through life through your current standing in society. Some of the things you may go through include a flu outbreak, malnourishment, surprise surgery, reduced earnings, and etc. In the end, I will reveal the number of people (specific to your option choices) who have to go through life and potentially have this problem in their life.
SAMPLE EXCERPT
REFLECTION
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What did you like best about working in this genre or mode? What did you find most limiting or challenging?
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I like how you could test the multiple pathways and see certain combinations of characteristics could lead to many different outcomes; however, I was limited to the number of combinations and the depth I could go to due to programming issues. Although this was in issue, the pathways gave multiple opportunities to show the user a certain pathway that could potentially lead to a very terrible outcome or an “okay” outcome. As I stated previously, I experienced a ton of challenges trying to develop this interactive story. Aside from the previous one, another one was actually attempting to connect all the pathways together. At one point I just had arrows connecting to boxes and I couldn’t even interpret my own program. Since I have never used anything like this before, I would have to repeatedly check and rewrite the program, so it made logical sense and flowed correctly. I also sometimes asked myself, “According to some of the data, it seems like these people would be fine!” Then I would remember another payment these people have to pay, and I would have to add it all up. It really limited the number of factors I could do without crashing the system.
What were the most radical ways in which your ideas about your subject changed as a result of this experiment?
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After seeing the difference in the per capita income between white and black people, I was very shocked. It hurts to know there are people about 35 minutes away from you and they are thinking whether they will have food on the table or not. It showed me that the problems occurring in Detroit were more extreme than what I imagined. I never expected 2/5 people to be in poverty. The sad thing is that to be considered impoverished, you have to be below a certain threshold. This says that there could be even more people in poverty, but they just didn’t meet the threshold/requirements to be considered impoverished. My father is from this area, and he lived here during the 80s’. It is sad to know that my father’s old home is just crumbling. Everyone always hears that Detroit is bad, but everyone thinks that it is mainly due to the violence. The violence itself is caused by this poverty! To me, going through all these statistical data made me think a bit about Detroit and its inhabitants, and the struggles they unfortunately have to go through.
How did working this experiment alter your understanding of audience and/or genre?
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With this being a program, I was constantly rewriting certain phrases in order for it to flow better. Also, since I was trying to make it seem a bit visual, I did add dialogue, which I think I could have been a bit more in depth (again, the program was a bit buggy). About the genre itself, I personally liked it. I found myself constantly thinking of ways I could show people how bad it is for some of these people in Detroit. I liked it because it made it seem like a journey anyone can go through. The program I used was an “eh” program. I wished I had something a bit more advanced, but everything else costed money and/or a better computer. Although it didn’t hurt my feelings about the genre, I was still perplexed many times.
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If you were to continue working from this experiment, what would be your next steps? Would you simply finish/polish your sketch draft, or go in a different direction?
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If I were to continue, I would see if there are any better programs. Second, I would expand the races from two to five (this is what I originally had, but there were many constraints with the program and the statistics I was given). I would also be a bit more specific on the certain insurance plans the user can choose. In addition, I would implement other environments in Metro Detroit like Grosse Pointe, Dearborn, or even places in Oakland County. I believe one of my weaknesses in this program was I don’t think I was able to efficiently show how divided the white and minority (Black, Latino, Asian, and etc.) were in terms of health, wealth, and in education. I think I could expand on that if I was given more time and more resources (statistics).