Overview
Campus Trade is a campus-wide trading card game designed to help new students start conversations. Conceptualized by senior Kayode Dada and built collaboratively with CCC research designer Cassie Lee, each card is an opportunity to share and listen to the kinds of stories that make MIT campus special. This fall it will be played by 1100 incoming first-year students as a part of Orientation Week at MIT. The project is supported by realtalk@MIT – CCC’s flagship program that helps the MIT community develop and practice the skills that make up a healthy civic culture – and the Office of the First Year.
Made by the community, about the community
Campus Trade wasn’t made by a school administrator or an outsider organization. It was originally made by rising senior Kayode Dada in 2025, and developed in 2026 in collaboration with CCC research designer Cassie Lee. This matters, because when you ask a community to shift how it communicates, top-down or generic solutions designed by people without first-hand experience can feel inauthentic and sterile, further negatively impacting feelings of trust. This is the design philosophy behind Campus Trade, and the broader realtalk@MIT vision – community-driven design creates the right conditions for high-trust, high-engagement conversations.
Each card in the tradable game system features an excerpt from a conversation between Kayode and another student, discussing how they found belonging on MIT campus. The artwork is also community generated, giving every card within the full 73 card set an authentic texture of life on campus. By scanning the embedded QR code, you can listen to an excerpt of that conversation, read more about the club or student group that they reference, and see who else has exchanged the card. Thus the more you collect, the more of the collective story of MIT campus reveals itself to you.
To trade cards you must complete the card’s“exchange cost” – a conversation or activity designed to foster personal storytelling. Players can choose to make sets based on the story type (e.g., sports cards, club cards), or color, and win prizes for creating specific types of sets.
Why realtalk@MIT supports it
Based on our past work with communities on campus, it’s clear that people at MIT have a lot to say, but conversation tends to silo into departments, clubs, and living spaces. When conversations do happen across the network, they feel topically limited. For students, the social script tends to fall into a similar pattern: “what’s your major, hometown, dorm, and workload.” While most students welcome deeper, more personal, or more interesting conversations, there is a tangible feeling that campus life doesn’t often offer opportunities or permission to do so.
These types of culture questions are common. Psychologists Michael Kardas, Amit Kumar and Nicholas Epley have shown that people consistently expect conversations with strangers to be more awkward, and less enjoyable, than they actually turn out to be – largely because we underestimate how much other people care about what we have to say. In a related finding known as the liking gap, Erica Boothby and colleagues found that after talking with someone new, people reliably underestimate how much their partner liked them. Put together, these describe a kind of collective misreading: though we may desire deeper conversations, our belief that others might not prevents us from trying.
This is why we’ve used games as precursors to dialogue events, such as deliberative assemblies. Games provide a safe, low-stakes environment to practice the kinds of conversation skills required to deepen or enhance dialogue, like approaching strangers and asking interesting questions. In her past work, Cassie has explored a variety of game mechanics that scaffold specific dialogue skills, for example asking follow-up questions, or progressing a conversation towards intimate topics.
Building conversation muscles
The realtalk@MIT program supports the MIT community in developing and practicing skills that make up a healthy civic democracy. Campus Trade creates a low-barrier, opt-in space where people meet as peers across roles and identities, practice lightweight listening, and build a shared language for campus life. In this way, games can act as “bridge projects” because they are deliberately easy to say yes to and create the conditions everything else depends on: networks of relationships, norms for disagreeing well, early signals of what the community needs, and a pool of people ready to take on more.
Next steps
In Orientation Week 2026, 1100 incoming freshmen will be introduced to the game and given prizes for completing sets. The realtalk@MIT team will study how gameplay impacts conversation behaviour, and what it learns will feed into the program’s broader work of shifting communication norms on campus.. More to come!
Acknowledgements
This big campus effort wouldn’t be possible without a big group of wonderful people.
This work is supported by the MIT Office of the First Year, special thanks to Laura Harvey and Mikey Santoro-Santos, and the MIT Center for Constructive Communication, thanks to Deb Roy and Dimitra Dimitrakopoulou.
The project creator, designer, and community lead is Kayode Dada. Project and production lead, design, graphic design, and research is lead by Cassie Lee. Elijah Rice created our website.
Thanks to Julia Matthews, Marina Rahkilin, and Alice Gold for project support.
Thanks to Lizz Bolaji for photos and documentation.
This project features stories by: Stephanie H. ’27, Ana S. ’27, Pauline Vien, Rafaa Q. ’27, Dianna O. ’28, Elena CA. ’29, Daina A. ’28, Connor P., Kayode D. ’27, Andrew P. ’28, Anika H. ’26, Maxine S. ’27, Kelton A. ’27, Elijah R. ’27, Noella A. ’28, Gloria Z., Caleb M. ’27, Chris S-H ’27, Hannah E. R. ’25, Moksh G., Ellie F. ’28, Ishan N ’29, Dagny D. ’29, Margaret Z. SB ’23, MEng ’24, Ben W. B.S. ’23, M.S. ’26, Ruben S. ’27, Maya A. ’26, Nikki C., Alicia J. ’27, Stella W. SMArchS ’26, Peyton B. ’27 and Catherine T. ’28, Joy X. ’29, Salt Z. ’27, Sabine C. ’26, Mouhammad S. ’27, Janet G. ’27, Marvin M. ’28, MIT President Sally Kornbluth, Julia, Marina, & Alice, Mikey S., Cassie L. ’24, Deb R.
This project features artwork by: Kenna Z. ’30, Zaynab A. ’29, April S. ’30, Hayim S. ’29, Elena C. A. ’29, Jenny B. ’25, Ellie F. ’28, Isabel P. ’27, Anika H. ’25, Lilah L. ’27, Sophia S. ’30, Gloria Z. ’26, Dora H., Satera X. ’30, Caleb P. ’28, Helen S. ’30, Ellie F. ’26, Chengyu L. ’29, Jingjing W. ’29, Margaret Z. ’23, Graphic Courtesy of EESA, Reem A. ’30, Alex Han, Stella W. SMArchS ’26, Sai ’26 , Sarah S. ’28, Vincent C. ’30, Shelly Y. ’29, Joy X. ’28, Rihn ’23, Lila L. ’26, Jef Czekaj, Cassie L. ’24
Thanks to all the orientation leaders who helped put the kits together!
