Image Credit : Photos courtesy of Potion
Project Overview
The PostSecret Universe app for iPhone and iPad is a digital collection of secrets and stories curated by the artist Frank Warren. The app brings together over five hundred never-before-seen secrets, including postcards, artworks, objects, digital secrets from the original PostSecret App, audio recordings, emails and video clips, in a vast digital compendium that illuminates our secret inner lives.
Over ten years ago, Frank asked the public to mail secrets anonymously to his house. From this initial simple request, the PostSecret project has amassed millions of followers and has been shared widely in books, on stage, and on the PostSecret blog (http://postsecret.com/). PostSecret Universe is the first PostSecret digital publication to share collections of secrets from strangers.
Since launching, the simple concept of PostSecret has struck a societal chord; for the public, sharing an intensely personal secret with a stranger can be an act of catharsis, and for Frank, the act of sharing secrets back to the world is a channel for offering insight into how our deepest secrets don’t separate us, but truly connect us. Potion was honored to collaborate with Frank Warren, HarperCollins, and thousands of PostSecret Community members.
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Team
POTION
Phillip Tiongson, Principal and Creative Director
Abby Palmer, Producer
Holly Houghton, Producer
Edyta Lewicka, Designer
Marie Lamouret, Design Intern
Benjamin Bojko, Lead Developer
Joshua Fisher, Senior Developer
Filippo Vanucci, Developer
POSTSECRET
Frank Warren, Creator
WILLIAM MORROW / HARPERCOLLINS
Brian Perrin, Executive Director, Digital Product Development
Shawn Nicholls, Senior Director of Marketing
Cassie Jones, Executive Editor
Kara Zauberman, Editorial Assistant
Caroline Oh, Animator
Cindy Yoon, Video Editor
Project Brief
We’re all so connected.
This is the driving concept behind PostSecret, a community art project founded by Frank Warren, where people mail in anonymous secrets to Frank's house on the back of a postcard. Until now, there was no comparable digital medium for exploring the physical secrets containing the deeply human connections that bind us all together. In 2013, Frank and HarperCollins Publishers selected Potion to create an emotional, interactive journey through PostSecret content, and the result is PostSecret Universe, a universal iOS app and the first PostSecret digital publication that shares back the best collections of secrets from strangers.
Project Innovation/Need
From the outset, Potion’s approach to PostSecret Universe was to create an integrated world of secrets, connected by human emotions and feelings rather than the algorithms of a computer. “It’s fascinating to see strangers read other strangers’ secrets” was an insight Frank shared with us early in the project, as the same secret can resonate in vastly different ways for each individual who reads it. And the ways a secret connects with human emotions is something a computer can never capture. For example, how would a computer “tag” a secret with only pictures and no words, or a secret written in Japanese script? Or how could a computer understand the vast divide between two secrets which may contain one word in common, for example, love?
Potion’s challenge was to devise a meaningful connective thread across hundreds of secrets, in a way that is powerful, relevant, and human, rather than arbitrary or algorithmic. And our solution was to leverage human responses to secrets through one of the largest channels possible: the PostSecret Community. Through Frank’s blog, we invited thousands of members of this Community to curate the connections between hundreds of secrets, one by one.
Design Challenge
Before any app development began, Potion created a temporary website where we regularly uploaded batches of secrets selected for the app. For each secret, visitors could share a phrase inspired by that secret, upvote phrases submitted by other community members, or add phrases that bind two secrets together. Three months and 30,000 collaborators later, Potion was able to create an interconnected world of secrets using emotional tags, where each secret is defined by its meaning and relevance to people, and ultimately amplifies the human connections between all of us.
This interconnected web, called the "globe", was Potion's greatest design feat: a virtual, three-dimensional world of physical objects created within the limitations of a two-dimensional mobile screen. We believe that the globe's significance both metaphorically, as a representation of the ways sharing secrets can connect us and transcend international boundaries, and as a design mechanism to invent a new and completely intuitive UX, has set a new standard for interacting with a narrative-based app.
User Experience
In the app, over five hundred never-before-seen secrets, including postcards, artworks, objects, digital secrets from the original PostSecret App (a forerunner to apps like Whisper and Secret), audio recordings, emails and video clips, exist in a virtual globe. Tapping a secret brings it into close focus, and touching and holding the secret again reveals the top phrases selected by the community, with each phrase transmitting users to a similarly evocative secret. Users can also swipe left to right through secrets, along the red string, and follow an intensely emotional journey curated by Frank. In this way, users can create their own path through deeply personal secrets, or follow a path by the artist himself, in a way that was never possible with PostSecret before.
For the first time ever, the app offers insight into Frank’s own story, and the greater impact secrets have had on the community. At the core of the globe, Frank includes personal, heartfelt, serious, and humorous stories about what inspired him to start PostSecret in 2004, told through animated sequences designed by Caroline Oh. The app also captures the greater impact of the project on the lives of individuals, communities, and even Frank himself.
Digital Experience - Mobile
This award celebrates innovation and creativity in design of a unique user experience in the combination of text, audio, still images, animation, video, and interactive content for mobile. Consideration given to clarity of communication and the matching information style to audience.
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