Heart Humanity

Here to promote and celebrate what makes us Human—Empathy, Compassion, Kindness, and Love.

My Role: Co-Founder, Co-Creative Director & Front-end Developer

The Team: Me & Co-Founder

The challenge: To create a method for reinforcing positive behavior in public in a discreet way, while also allowing these experiences to be shared online. The project had a one-month timeline.

My role & approach: The concept began years prior with an idea for stickers with positive messages, which became the seed for Heart Humanity. I quickly realized I did not want to work alone and partnered with my girlfriend, who brought a passion for social good design. I had already secured the name and URL for the initiative. Together, we divided tasks to meet our aggressive deadline. My partner led the branding and web design, while I handled coding the website, social media setup, and vendor sourcing for the stickers. We collaborated on the mission statement and all other copy, holding several working sessions to brainstorm ideas and test concepts. Our first project was to hand out “Thanks for being a good human” stickers to people we observed performing acts of kindness, which required us to become more attentive to our surroundings.

The impact: Heart Humanity provided a new avenue to share positivity with strangers. The project made us profoundly more conscious of the people and events around us. We have given stickers to thousands of people all over the world. For several years, I maintained a personal goal to find and reward one person every day, a practice I continue by always carrying stickers. We found that sharing experiences online< was more challenging than anticipated; capturing a person’s story often detracted from the genuine, discreet moment. We chose to stop this practice, and instead, it was more rewarding when people organically shared their experiences using a hashtag we created. This organic sharing felt more aligned with our core mission to spread a message of love, empathy, and compassion.