Research Projects
Supporting Local Climate Adaptation through Playful Design
This project explores how playful design can empower local communities to better understand and respond to climate change risks, particularly in vulnerable coastal areas. While many adaptation initiatives emphasize engagement—raising awareness, participation, and dialogue—this project investigates what is needed to move from engagement to empowerment: enabling real-life action and sustained change.
Through participatory, creative, and game-based methods, the project examines how play can make climate adaptation more tangible, accessible, and emotionally resonant. By combining local knowledge with design experimentation, we seek to uncover the conditions under which playful approaches promote agency, collaboration, and trust among community members, practitioners, and climate-related initiatives.
The work critically reflects on what is often missing in climate adaptation projects: the mechanisms that translate temporary engagement into lasting empowerment and impact. Ultimately, the project aims to contribute to both theory and practice by demonstrating how playful, co-creative processes can bridge the gap between awareness and action—helping communities not only to imagine but also to implement more resilient and adaptive futures.
Wildfire Resilience Games
We are developing a collection of minigames to help raise awareness, improve preparedness, and create resilience in the face of disasters from wildfire. Our approach is community-driven participatory design, and we are working directly with residents and local experts in communities that have been recently disrupted by wildfires, to ensure that the games reflect the lived experiences of people in wildfire-prone areas. The main game collection is the Wildfire Minigames Collection, but you can also try out our other prototypes, all available here: https://ucsc-wildfire-games.itch.io
Are you interested in using these games with a class or at an event? Check out our Facilitator's Guide to help you get started: https://wildfiregames.short.gy/guide
Virtual Reality for Scientific Sensemaking
We are exploring how shared virtual reality tools can augment the scientific sensemaking process. Through collaborating with researchers across various domains such as civil engineering and marine science, we use research-through-design methods to create 3D data visualizations and prototype shared interfaces for working with data. Domains include viewing coral reefs using gaussian splats at AI tools for identification, elephants seal dive pathways alongside biometric data, and wildfire evacuation traffic simuulations with immersive street view images.
