My name is Micah J. Kessel - I'm a Design Strategist and Founder of Playground of Empathy  -

My gift is in intrinsically understanding the power of immersive design to change people's behaviors for exacting or instating large scale societal change. 

I’ve noticed that I am one of the few people I have met, who understands and tends to the power of experience for communicating ideas that mobilize systemic change.  

For 10+ years I designed experiential concepts alongside companies like Microsoft, Google, Disney, and successfully founded and ran the most five star rated escape room in the world, according to TripAdvisor. In this time I observed thousands of small groups  going through my experiences. 

Observing complex challenge behavior so repeatedly in practice, magnified an understanding. I'm certain that prosocial societal change making through simulations of abstract realism, is more important and potent than ever imagined. However, doing so well, requires true interdisciplinary thinking. Many creatives make with fantasy but have no deep thirst to develop through formative findings in science and find it sufficient to simply state their truths through art. Many scientists want to change the social or environmental world, but don't understand the power of fantasy and design, as an agent in how to study sciences inclusive human impact, and then harness that understanding to let science evolve our social society. Our goal is also to help psychological scientists develop laboratory experiences that have the subjective realism of everyday life, thereby supporting science's potential to advance our species. Then allow these advancements to become part of our world now.

Realizing the importance of combining and applying these two practices, I founded Playground of Empathy, which creates unparalleled immersive experiences that will offer a paradigm shift in the meaning of quality time and social action. Changing the quality of time for visitors will mean these visitors will how to redefine the quality of their inner lives, and the lives of their community. Not through lessons, but through joyful experiences, the way we often learn best. We engage the power of immersive design to support the crafting of deeply moving, authentic, intricate yet broad experiences designed to contribute towards large scale societal change.

These extraordinarily engaging group experiences are already combating our mass mental health epidemic at the source of our biased perspectives, by strengthening people's connection to their own and other’s emotions exponentially better than passive media like films or museums. 

My core research within Playground of Empathy as a founder, is in the study of emotions as it applies to immersive experience.  As we prepare for this Future flagship location, our current more modular experience creates empathy around gender awareness, by allowing visitors to walk in the shoes of a transgender youth, with an African American father and Caucasian mother from Charlottesville, or a non-binary University professor, or a pregnant woman in her third trimester. It's incredible to see what happens. 

We have shared this experience at Harvard's Graduate School of Design, The Black in Design/Black Futurism  Conference, the Education First conference, and at Massachusetts General Hospital with the Chiefs of Medicine, Pediatrics, Nursing, and Police. We're going for systemic change, but in an radically novel way. Not through pamphlets or educational films. We're doing this through experience. Living in a country polarized and paralyzed by an inability to have effective oppositional conversations, In 2020, our goal is a very national tour, where the Walk in My Shoes Experience can tell a very different story on how we can advance as a society when we learn how to converse not through the heat of our convictions, but through the authenticity of our shared experiences. 

Our work thrives deeply in gratitude of Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, President of the Association of Psychological Sciences, and Dr. Karen Quigley. former president of the society for Psychophysiological Research. With their support, we are striving towards the very depths of understanding and communicating the construction of our emotions. Currently in the lab, we're conducting studies on how simulations like these can innovate not only public perception, but also methods of experimentation in science.

Maybe all fantasies told are about the value of making change. We're simply choosing to live that out expressively. If you'd like to know more about the vision, here it is. Below you can also see some of my previous designs, experiences and experiential artworks.

The deliverable of emotion-centered locations in cities around the world, will be highly aesthetic, deeply moving, entertaining, interactive agents of change, all supported by testing in science, technology, and a collection of the most insightful emotions research available to humankind.

With support of our collaborators at the Interdisciplinary Affective Science Lab at Northeastern, and through Playground of Empathy, I am a commitment to emotional awareness in communities around the globe, through an evolutionary movement in collaborations, networks, and infrastructures.