Fast Company magazine has a great case study of Once Upon a School which gives a glimpse behind the making of a TED Prize wish.  Profiling the amazing work of TED Prize hero Maria Giudice and her colleagues at Hot Studio, the study looks at their work on Dave Eggers’ wish – from design concept to final execution of the Once Upon a School website.

Hot Studio CEO and founder Maria Giudice…knew the difficulties of working within a volunteer-based organization: “How do you create something that’s big enough to move the conversation forward a little bit, but won’t overwhelm them to manage?” Her team worked closely with Eggers to explore the viability of his many ideas, from a volunteer-matching service to a locator that would direct users to a neighborhood school. Since the project needed to be monitored through the existing administration of the 826 non-profit, the designers knew the concept had to be appropriately-sized for existing conditions, but scalable if more resources were found.  With Eggers, Hot Studio’s designers decided on a solution: A highly-visual Web site that would be a powerful way to share volunteers’ stories of working one-on-one in schools.

We are so excited to have Hot Studio’s work celebrated in this way and appreciate their dedication to the TED Prize, Dave Eggers’ wish and Once Upon a School.

And don’t forget, the new school year is about to begin. Go out, volunteer and add your story here.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 5th, 2009 at 2:10 am and is filed under Dave Eggers' Wish Blog, TEDPrize Updates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.