"THE SUN WAKER"

There’s a growing trend towards distrust of science and technology amongst some people within the U.S. When people aren’t supporting advancements in scientific solutions, then progress gets delayed and people who can be helped earlier on don’t get helped. 

Polling done by the Pew Research Center shows that the number of people who believe that science has “made life more difficult” increased by 50 percent from 2009 to 2015. 

According to a 2017 survey by the Huffington Post, only 35 percent of respondents have “a lot” of trust in scientists. 

And the number of people who do “not at all” trust scientists increased by over 50 percent from a similar poll conducted by the HuffPost in December 2013.

When people are opposed to a technology, it’s because they’re afraid of it. They’re afraid of it because they don’t understand how it works or who it’s necessary for. 

The question I wanted to answer: how can I get people to understand why new technologies and scientific solutions are important? 

By using empathy and placing people in the shoes of those who need new technologies, I wanted them to better understand why those technologies are needed. I knew that storytelling was an effective method to build empathy, and I enjoyed writing stories. 

Well-written stories are also more approachable and memorable than something full of technical jargon, and tend to stick in people’s minds longer. As with any form of entertainment, people want something to enjoy. People will often remember and cherish scenes, characters, and dialogues from their favorite works of fiction. However — like the old fables of Aesop and Greek myths such as the Trojan Horse — stories can also be a powerful vessel for teaching knowledge.

In addition, there’s a growing market of entertainment called Social Impact Entertainment (SIE) — which is “a variety of mainstream entertainment forms...that intend to have social impact next to great entertainment value.” 

Audience members of this genre want entertainment with a greater focus on positive social impact. Examples of such titles are “To Kill a Mockingbird”, “Crazy Rich Asians”, and “And the Mountains Echoed”, indicating that these works can also become popular.

Upon doing research, I observed that there weren’t many works of entertainment that focused on issues related to trust in science and technology. A majority tend to focus on other (important) topics such as racism, inequality, and gender stereotypes. 

Ethical Emma. Young adult, 18 - 45 year old, who wants entertainment with a greater focus on positive social impact. Enjoys mainstream entertainment as well, but is looking to live in a world where companies are building products that benefit society and solve social issues. Listens to music, reads books, and watches tv shows that center around relevant social issues. Promotes diversity and inclusion. 

Given the scope of this problem, and seeing an untapped opportunity to bring something fresh and socially impactful to entertainment — I decided to write a fictional book about people with different life-threatening diseases, and how they were using new scientific innovations to live longer.

The book is divided into three separate stories, each with a different protagonist — the first story covers cancer, the second story covers heart disease, and the third story covers sickle cell anemia.

I wrote a first draft and gave it to beta readers for early feedback, and to validate as to whether I was accomplishing my goal of bringing something entertaining, innovative, and informative, while also increasing people’s understanding of certain diseases and the importance of new technologies. 

I then interviewed people who’d read the first draft to learn about whether they wanted to read more and how well I was achieving my goal. 

The interviews showed me that people enjoyed the concept and the format of the stories. Several people suggested finding out a way to explain the technical info in a smoother, more interesting way. Some of the feedback I got also indicated that doing more thorough research on patients themselves would help make the stories feel more realistic, as well. 

To validate demand for the book before investing more time and energy into it, I started an Indiegogo campaign that described my goal and what people would get from buying my book. 

The campaign reached 103% of its funding goal — surpassing $5,000 in pre-sales that were then used to cover the publication costs — giving me the validation that there was demand for the product concept.

To ensure that I had the right facts to make the stories feel realistic and that I was respecting the circumstances of patients with the diseases, I interviewed around 10 medical scientists and 15 people with cancer, sickle cell, and heart disease. I also researched over 40 articles and journals online around the diseases I covered in the book.

In addition, to ensure that I was writing a book that would be not only entertaining, but also a classic, I studied and analyzed what it was I liked most about the books and movies I tended to go through again and again. Examples of such books are The Hobbit, the Harry Potter book series, and The Alchemist. 

I used the results from my analysis to create a set of guidelines that I went through as I wrote the second draft of my book and re-wrote the three stories. The aim was to make sure that people would not only enjoy the stories once, but that they would want to re-read them and enjoy them more than once.

To make sure that I was achieving my goal and that the book’s stories were having the intended impact, I conducted beta tests with 10 users — one of whom was my revisions editor, the other 9 my book’s beta readers. 

Achieving success meant that users:

• Were enjoying the stories
• Found the stories to be informative
• Had a greater understanding of diseases, the importance of technologies, and the power of empathy after reading the stories 

After having them read the draft, I collected their feedback (phone, in-person, and through sites like SurveyMonkey). The surveys from SurveyMonkey were built to collect qualitative and quantitative feedback that would be used in aid of design decisions behind further iterations of the book.

Some of the questions I asked when obtaining feedback to determine success were:

• “Were the stories in the “The Sun Waker” entertaining, meaningful, and uplifting?”
• “If you felt that the stories did a good job in teaching something new while also entertaining — did you like that format, and would you want more?”
• “Did the stories give you a greater understanding of different diseases?”
• “Did the stories give you a greater understanding of the importance of new technologies?”
• “Did the stories give you a greater understanding of how one can use empathy to help people?”

I designed the book and its stories over 4 iterations in total throughout the entire project. Each time, I would get feedback, incorporate that feedback and make changes into my stories, and send the book out again for another round of feedback. 

Towards the third and fourth iterations, the feedback received centered more on minor content changes, tweaks on things like grammar and punctuation, or rewording sentences to make them easier to understand.

With each iteration, the feedback became more and more positive, indicating that I was on the right track to designing the experience better. 

By the end of the project — when it was time to submit my final manuscript, the test report results showed that: 

• 60% users “strongly agreed” and 30% “agreed” that the stories in “The Sun Waker” were entertaining, meaningful, and uplifting.
• 50% users “strongly agreed” and 40% “agreed” that they liked how the stories served to entertain as well as inform. 
• 60% users “strongly agreed” and 40% “agreed” that the stories gave them a greater understanding of different diseases.
• 70% users “strongly agreed” and 20% “agreed” that the stories gave them a greater understanding of the importance of new technologies.  
• 60% users “strongly agreed” and 30% “agreed” that the stories gave them a greater understanding of how they could use empathy to help people.

In the future, it’s likely that I’ll take the feedback from my last iteration and use it towards writing another book on different topics, now that I know what to improve upon.