In the Socratic dialogue 'Republic', Plato famously wrote: “our need will be the real creator”, and this rang true in a recent project we at Alkimia Learning undertook in collaboration with fellow KaosPilot Masterclass alumni from Culture Hero. When client constraints meant our well-designed plans would not work, necessity became the mother of invention.

I Recently I was asked to design a session to stimulate people's thinking about growth mindset and help them to strengthen theirs. Without going into the whole session design, I wanted to highlight how and why yo-yos played a starring role.  

As learning experience designers, I believe we cannot directly ‘engage’ learners, but our challenge is to create the conditions which support learners exercising their autonomy and choosing to engage in the learning experience on offer.