Project: Super Secret
Studio: IDEO NYC
Discipline(s): Communication Design, Interaction Design, Design Research
Team Members: Ben Swire, Hope Game, Andrea Dineen, Tim Peck, Jerome Goh
Studio: IDEO NYC
Discipline(s): Communication Design, Interaction Design, Design Research
Team Members: Ben Swire, Hope Game, Andrea Dineen, Tim Peck, Jerome Goh
Client: Mineola School District of Long Island NY, is a hyper-progressive school district pushing for excellence through many strategies including growth mindset for middle schoolers. Led by their Superintendent, Michael P. Nagler, Ed.D. the 5 schools in the Mineola network are striving to become a stem-center for growth mindset education nationally.
Brief:
Harness empathic learning for 3rd and 4th grade students remotely while creating connections to others in isolation.
Story:
Read the full story here at IDEO.com
When COVID-19 shut down elementary school buildings, it shut down opportunities for young students to build soft skills like empathy. It also severed personal contact between seniors and other human beings, leaving many confined and lonely.
Alongside teachers and students at Mineola Union Free School District in Mineola, New York, IDEO took on a project to design a program that would help 4th graders build empathy by connecting idle students with isolated seniors. We thought it would be a simple, playful opportunity, but in the end, we found a powerful tool for connection that might be scaled to bridge any number of social divides.
The IDEO team decided that instead of trying to compensate for the limitations of quarantine, we would embrace those constraints and make them the centerpiece of the experience.
Thus, the Department of Super Secrets was born—an IDEO twist on the pen-pal relationship. Our heroes picked secret super aliases and we paired them up: one student with one senior citizen. Over five weeks, the partners were prompted to share five specific secrets designed to be low stakes, but highly personal, carefully crafted to spotlight character, values, and feelings. This was a delicate tightrope walk, asking them to offer up something meaningful without being invasive or uncomfortable. We designed the prompts to build on each other, gently establishing a bond through vulnerability and reflection.
Impact:
Play allowed the partners to share vulnerable stories in a safe way. One prompt—"Share the secret of your most embarrassing moment"—became a funny way of sharing values, fears, and anxieties. Because underneath the slipped bathing suits or milk-spewing nose is the nature of what you find embarrassing, and that tells a lot about a person. Is it failure? Public or individual? Loss of control? Misunderstanding? Fear itself?
Sharing a moment you wish had never happened is an act of trust and bravery. Receiving someone else’s story is a way to remember you are not alone in the world as a flawed human being.
Play allows you to do both with a smile.
Brief:
Harness empathic learning for 3rd and 4th grade students remotely while creating connections to others in isolation.
Story:
Read the full story here at IDEO.com
When COVID-19 shut down elementary school buildings, it shut down opportunities for young students to build soft skills like empathy. It also severed personal contact between seniors and other human beings, leaving many confined and lonely.
Alongside teachers and students at Mineola Union Free School District in Mineola, New York, IDEO took on a project to design a program that would help 4th graders build empathy by connecting idle students with isolated seniors. We thought it would be a simple, playful opportunity, but in the end, we found a powerful tool for connection that might be scaled to bridge any number of social divides.
The IDEO team decided that instead of trying to compensate for the limitations of quarantine, we would embrace those constraints and make them the centerpiece of the experience.
Thus, the Department of Super Secrets was born—an IDEO twist on the pen-pal relationship. Our heroes picked secret super aliases and we paired them up: one student with one senior citizen. Over five weeks, the partners were prompted to share five specific secrets designed to be low stakes, but highly personal, carefully crafted to spotlight character, values, and feelings. This was a delicate tightrope walk, asking them to offer up something meaningful without being invasive or uncomfortable. We designed the prompts to build on each other, gently establishing a bond through vulnerability and reflection.
Impact:
Play allowed the partners to share vulnerable stories in a safe way. One prompt—"Share the secret of your most embarrassing moment"—became a funny way of sharing values, fears, and anxieties. Because underneath the slipped bathing suits or milk-spewing nose is the nature of what you find embarrassing, and that tells a lot about a person. Is it failure? Public or individual? Loss of control? Misunderstanding? Fear itself?
Sharing a moment you wish had never happened is an act of trust and bravery. Receiving someone else’s story is a way to remember you are not alone in the world as a flawed human being.
Play allows you to do both with a smile.
