ThinkHumanTV

Recent reports from the CDC and the Psychiatric Times indicate that nearly half of US high school students have persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, and over 33% of adolescents meet criteria for anxiety diagnosis by age 18, representing some of the worst indicators ever recorded for teen mental health. 

At the same time, improved social emotional skills such as self-awareness and emotion management have been shown to contribute to reductions in anxiety and depression, higher graduation rates, improved academic performance, and greater psychological and physical wellbeing over the lifespan. 

Most US education leaders now recognize that social and emotional learning (SEL) is crucial to student success and wellness, with over 90% of US school districts investing in improved social-emotional programming. 

In recent years, online SEL solutions have taken on greater prominence, a trend that has been significantly accelerated by the nationwide school shutdowns caused by Covid-19. Existing online SEL solutions include platforms such as ACT Mosaic, Panorama Education, and ReThink Education. Yet virtually all such offerings suffer from one or more critical shortcomings that undermine their effectiveness, particularly at the middle and high school level. These shortcomings fall into several categories including: 1) content quality, 2) content variety, 3) knowledge transfer, and 4) performance measurement.

Content Quality: SEL programming frequently relies on narrative, i.e. stories, to drive learning. However, narrative content developed by educators often isn’t very compelling. Adolescents are particularly likely to find such content inauthentic (that is, not relevant to their lives, boring, or “cheesy”) leading to learner disengagement and poor outcomes6. 

Content Variety: Variety of practice is highly important for learning, as it gives students opportunities to hone their knowledge and skills on many different problems, helping drive home key underlying principles. In the SEL context, variety is also important in the kinds of narratives that are used to depict emotional situations: the US student population is highly diverse, and calls for a wide selection of stories that reflect the full range of young people’s experiences and backgrounds. Yet because content production is expensive and time-consuming, SEL solutions largely continue to follow a one-size-fits all model that often lacks variability, cultural responsiveness, and sufficient opportunities for practice. 

Knowledge Transfer: The ability to use knowledge and skills in new contexts and situations, or transfer, is one of the central goals of education. However, few existing SEL solutions are designed for transfer. This can result in students failing to take their social emotional learning with them beyond the classroom. 

Performance Measurement: Accurately measuring students’ social emotional learning skills and the changes in those skills is notoriously difficult. Few existing SEL solutions are able to offer precise performance measurement, which impedes educators’ and schools’ ability to assess the effects of SEL programming and make appropriate adjustments. 

In response to the needs outlined above, Affectifi Inc. has developed an innovative web-based SEL platform prototype called ThinkHumanTV that turns popular movies and shows into a social-emotional skill-building tool for learners in grade 3 and up. ThinkHumanTV was designed by Affectifi’s co-founders, who are cognitive science faculty at Columbia University Teachers College focusing on social emotional learning. The platform was built on the basis of decades of research in emotion science, learning science, and cognitive psychology. 

The solution takes the form of a browser extension (initially developed for the Google Chrome browser), which allows learners to build emotional knowledge and skills while watching movies and shows on streaming sites such as Netflix, Disney+, and Peacock TV (see Demo). 

This unique approach enables ThinkHumanTV to tap into the enormous libraries of major streaming sites, leveraging their high quality, popular media content to provide a truly engaging, varied, and culturally responsive learning experience to students. The growing ThinkHumanTV library features over sixty-five (65) diverse titles including 'Star Wars' and 'Friday Night Lights.' This mode of training also allows for critical skills like reflection and perspective-taking to be practiced in-the-moment (i.e. right as a character’s emotional reaction is perceived).

ThinkHumanTV currently offers training curricula for elementary, middle and high school students, as well as for college students, and educators. Each curriculum consists of a number of modules that feature brief lessons focusing on an emotion science concept, such as psychological needs, accompanied by media-based training exercises that help illustrate the concept. This practice-driven approach focused on teaching emotion science supports core social emotional competencies like emotional awareness, empathy and emotion regulation, and facilitates knowledge and skill transfer to new situations.

ThinkHumanTV is also able to deliver precise measurement of a number of social-emotional skills, such as empathy. It does so by using exercises designed on the basis of emotion science principles like emotion valence (i.e. emotions’ pleasantness or unpleasantness) that lend themselves to sufficiently objective evaluation.

ThinkHumanTV has been used in over 30 schools. It has shown significant promise based on user testing, efficacy testing, classroom pilots, and sales, and has been met with overwhelming enthusiasm by educators and students. It has previously received NSF SBIR awards and was a finalist in the Tools Competition, PENN GSE Business Plan Competition, the Google for Startups contest, and SXSW EDU Startup Launch. It has also formed an R&D partnership with Sesame Workshop, and was approved as a K12 wellness resource by the Jed Foundation, one of the largest mental health non-profits in the education space.

Affectifi is now seeking to enhance the ThinkHumanTV platform by integrating support for embedded YouTube content, such that users can train without the need to access a paid streaming service like Netflix. This new training option will significantly reduce barriers to utilizing the platform in public schools, ensure equity of access, enable much wider adoption, and dramatically increase the platform’s potential impact. Affectifi is also developing mobile solutions for younger children in collaboration with Sesame Workshop.

ThinkHumanTV is an adaptive platform, with the browser-based solution designed for learners aged 9 and up. However, it has been used primarily with adolescent learners in middle and high school. Adolescents and young adults are an underserved population when it comes to social emotional programming and research as the bulk of such efforts are directed at younger age groups. It is also a more challenging target population for SEL interventions compared to younger learners. Yet this population is known to be in need of support building their socio-emotional skills as they face increased social and academic pressures in middle school, high school and college. This is especially true for learners in lower income and minority communities: they often receive fewer opportunities for social emotional learning while being in greatest need of support developing skills like emotional resilience given the additional stressors associated with issues like poverty and discrimination.

Research shows when targeting older learners like adolescents, better outcomes have been achieved with interventions that provide a new conceptual framework, or mental model, of emotional functioning, rather than attempting to tell learners the “right” way to behave. These findings inform the ThinkHumanTV training methodology, which emphasizes teaching fundamental emotion science principles like appraisal. Understanding such principles has been shown to lead to more effective social problem-solving, better self-regulation, and increased empathy. 

Research also suggests that learning emotional skills should be grounded in concrete, authentic examples of emotions and behavior. To that end, ThinkHumanTV makes use of high quality popular media, such as TV and film. Such media content offers several critical advantages over other types of narrative: 1) it allows a learner to observe characters’ facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice, and 2) to practice perspective-taking ‘in the moment’ by reflecting on characters’ emotions as they occur, and 3) it has proven itself to be emotionally compelling by garnering critical acclaim and attracting a large audience. As such, it offers an ideal vehicle for socio-emotional training.

In a recent randomized control study (N=46), graduate students who received training on the platform reported significantly higher use of healthier regulation strategies (reframing rather than suppression) compared to the control group (ps<.05). A separate study (N=41) using a pre-post design showed that community college freshmen who completed training on the platform had significantly higher (p<.05) levels of emotional self-confidence. 

Furthermore, over 90% of surveyed learners reported that the platform improved their understanding of emotions (N=74) and nearly 75% reported that it made them more confident about managing their emotions (N=51). 

Overall, sustained use of the application in school is expected to produce a number of positive social-emotional outcomes including: greater emotion knowledge; greater emotional awareness; improved perspective-taking and cognitive empathy; improved emotion regulation; and reduced incidence of high stress, anxiety and depression. 

Affectifi's plan to integrate support for YouTube will ensure equity of access, removing the barrier of paid streaming sites and allowing the platform to be much more widely adopted in public schools, significantly increasing its impact.

The company founders, Ilya Lyashevsky and Melissa Cesarano, are cognitive science faculty at Columbia Teachers College, and hold PhDs in cognitive science from Columbia with a focus on social emotional learning. The ThinkHumanTV training methodology is based in part on their research, which has been published in the American Education Research Journal and presented at conferences like the SEL Exchange, APS, and elsewhere. They are also experienced technologists, artists and social entrepreneurs. Ilya has 20+ years experience building software for startups, Fortune 500 companies, non-profits and government, and holds a BS and MS in Computer Science from Stanford. He is the technical lead on the project.

The company received Phase I and II SBIR awards from the National Science Foundation. It is a current finalist in the Tools Competition, and was a finalist in the PENN GSE Business Plan Competition, the Google for Startups contest, the SXSW EDU Startup Launch competition, and a semi-finalist in a previous MIT Solve Challenge, and was approved as a K12 wellness resource by the Jed Foundation. The company has also formed R&D partnerships with the Hollywood Compassion Coalition and Sesame Workshop. The latter is a key current collaborator on a ThinkHumanTV mobile application currently being developed to serve younger children.

Besides the founders and a stellar team of 10 designers, educators, and engineers, Affectifi has lined up a formidable group of advisors, including: John Gamba, Entrepreneur in Residence, UPenn Graduate School of Education; George Cigale, former Founder and CEO of Tutor.com; Jo Schneier, Founder and CEO of Trusty.care, 3x edtech founder; Paul Goren, CASEL board member; and Susan Fuhrman, President Emerita, Columbia Teachers College.

The web-based version of ThinkHumanTV, which operates in a web browser, has been used primarily in K12 schools, and is intended for students aged 9 and up as well as for educators. ThinkHumanTV makes use of a browser extension (initially developed for the Google Chrome browser), which allows learners to build emotional knowledge and skills while watching streaming sites like Netflix and Disney+.

This solution has been used in over 30 schools, with over a dozen paying school clients, across over half a dozen US states. The platform has delivered over 35K SEL experiences, with over 2500 students reached at the K12 and college level. 

Affectifi has sought to pilot ThinkHumanTV with and sell to diverse learner populations. It has deployed the platform in a variety of private and public elementary, middle and high schools, in urban and suburban settings, including schools with a high percentage of lower income and POC students. Current client organizations include the NYC Dept of Education, the Chapin School, the Crefeld School, Oratory Prep, and others. 

The platform has been evaluated in two research studies and has gone through significant user testing. The research studies showed that participants who received training on the platform reported significantly higher use of healthier regulation strategies (reframing rather than suppression), and significantly higher levels of emotional self-confidence. 

At the same time, over 90% of surveyed learners reported that the platform improved their understanding of emotions (N=74) and nearly 75% reported that it made them more confident about managing their emotions (N=51).

In addition, Affectifi is working with Prof. Richard Lane, a leading emotion science researcher who developed the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS), to integrate the electronic version of the scale into the ThinkHumanTV platform. The eLEAS is a well established measure of emotional awareness, which has been used in numerous studies, and which Affectifi has licensed from the University of Arizona. The eLEAS can help establish ThinkHumanTV users’ baseline levels of EA, as well as changes in their EA over time. 

ThinkHumanTV has been approved as a K12 wellness resource by the
Jed Foundation, one of the larges mental health non-profits working in
the education space. Affectifi has also been approved as a provider of professional development services in Pennsylvania, and has applied for approval in New York and Massachusetts. The company will be using the ThinkHumanTV platform to help educators develop a better understanding of emotions and build their own emotional competence while earning continuing education credits.

Affectifi has also formed R&D partnerships with the Hollywood Compassion Coalition (HCC) and Sesame Workshop. In its work with Sesame Workshop, Affectifi is developing a ThinkHumanTV mobile application designed for children ages 4 - 9. The application prototype has been completed, and will be undergoing user testing with an initial cohort of 4-5 year olds in May of 2024.

Affectifi has also begun limited piloting of ThinkHumanTV in healthcare settings such as therapy practices and hospitals. The company has also applied for a research grant led by a PI from the University of Arizona to conduct a longitudinal study of using ThinkHumanTV in a clinical setting.

Affectifi is actively seeking more partner schools and other organizations as it works to scale ThinkHumanTV and get more input on the platform from users and stakeholders, especially as it integrates support for YouTube which will make the platform more readily accessible in public schools. 

Additionally, the company is looking to refine its product-market fit, as well as sales and service delivery processes to improve its capacity to scale.

The company is also actively seeking additional academic collaborators to test platform efficacy in K12 and other contexts.

The company is also seeking to develop additional relationships with streaming services and other media entities as it explores the potential for integrating its technology with such partners.

Affectifi would welcome the support of the MIT Solve team in all these areas.

ThinkHumanTV is the first and only solution that integrates emotional skills training directly with major streaming platforms, leveraging their highly popular and diverse content for educational purposes systematically and at scale.

Additionally, ThinkHumanTV relies on a new educational methodology called deep emotion learning (DEL). Developed by Affectifi’s founding team of Columbia cognitive scientists, the methodology makes deep learning and transfer of emotional knowledge and skills its central focus. It has been consistently shown that skill transfer is facilitated by deep learning and the ability to recognize the so-called ‘deep structure’ of a problem. Deep structures (e.g. physics laws) capture the functional interrelations of the elements of a system or concept, and may be shared by many different problems. There is evidence that the deep structures of the socio-emotional domain can be represented by well-established psychological principles like appraisal. Research shows understanding such principles supports empathy and emotional acceptance, and helps learners to make better inferences about their own and others’ emotions, and to guide their responses, across situations. 

Affectifi’s founding team has previously proposed a comprehensive instructional model of human emotions. This model, which combines a number of well-researched psychological concepts like appraisal, is at the core of the DEL methodology, as well as ThinkHumanTV curricula and the platform's algorithmic AI training engine. The ThinkHumanTV platform is thus truly transformative in combining the best available media with the most comprehensive and systematic, personalized emotional training program. No other solution is able to offer the same learning experience.  By meeting young people where they are, ThinkHumanTV can achieve unparalleled engagement while building essential emotional skills through in-the-moment, individualized practice designed for mastery and transfer. With the integration of YouTube support, the platform will become truly universally accessible, and able to benefit learners in lower income and other underserved communities.

Moreover, due to the unique nature of Affectifi’s methodology which focuses on grasping fundamental emotion science principles, ThinkHumanTV is able to offer precise, performance-based social emotional skill assessment, which is of value to educators, mental health professionals, and learners themselves. Such performance measurement is notoriously difficult in the social-emotional/EQ context, and most alternative solutions fail to meaningfully address this issue. 

The innovative nature of ThinkHumanTV extends beyond it existing web-based experience. Affectifi is collaborating with Sesame Workshop on a mobile application that will adapt the ThinkHumanTV experience for children ages 4-9. For this application, Affectifi has created a unique technology solution to allow mobile devices to sync with smart TVs and deliver emotional skills training while watching content on any streaming service, without running afoul of copyright laws. This offers the potential to positively impact the early development of millions of children, enabling them to improve their emotional skills while watching their favorite movies and shows.

ThinkHumanTV is expected to produce a positive impact on socio-emotional competencies and related measures as described below.

Self-Awareness

A central aspect of self-awareness is an understanding of one’s emotions and their causes, and how these are related to thoughts, beliefs, and behavior(1). Learning foundational emotion science principles would thus be expected to lead to improvements in self-awareness, enabling real-time and post facto inference-making about the causes of one’s emotions.

Social Awareness

Social awareness depends on the ability to perceive others’ emotions, which involves the evaluation of external signs such as facial expressions, posture and tone of voice(2). Character-focused practice exercises that are a core part of ThinkHumanTV training would be expected to bolster perceptual social awareness.

Greater knowledge of the emotions would also be expected to lead to improved understanding of others’ emotions and behavior, and the ability to make more accurate inferences and attributions with regard to these phenomena, enhancing cognitive empathy. For instance, work done by Affectifi’s founding team has produced evidence that teaching the concept of appraisal can make one more accepting of others' and one's own emotions(3). 

Self-regulation

ThinkHumanTV training would also be expected to positively impact self-regulation ability. Understanding how emotions arise and operate would help normalize emotions(4), as well as increase confidence in managing emotions, which has been shown to support regulation(5). Furthermore, the practice of applying emotion science principles in analyzing emotional experiences can help automate reflective and observational processes that have inherent regulatory effects(6). Finally, greater knowledge of emotions and the practice of considering potential regulatory strategies in various hypothetical scenarios can be expected to improve one's regulation skills(7).

Indeed two recent studies showed that students who received ThinkHumanTV training reported significantly higher use of healthier regulation strategies(8), and higher levels of emotional self-confidence(9). Based on past research, such socio-emotional improvements, if sustained, would be expected to translate to long-term academic benefits such as improved classroom climate and academic performance, reduced absenteeism, and higher graduation rates(1,7,10).

References

1.Weissberg et al.(2015). Social and emotional Learning: Past, Present, and Future. In Durlak et al.(Eds.) Handbook of Social and Emotional Learning:Research and Practice.New York,NY:The Guilford Press.

2.Decety,J., & Lamm,C.(2006). Human empathy through the lens of social neuroscience. The Scientific World Journal,6,1146-1163.

3.Lyashevsky,I., Cesarano,M., Black,J.(2020). To Understand Is to Forgive. American Educational Research Journal,57(2),906–940

4.Berking,M.,&Schwarz,J.(2014). Affect Regulation Training. In J.J.Gross (Ed.).Handbook of Emotion Regulation(pp.529-547).New York,NY:The Guilford Press.

5.Sapolsky,R.M.(2007). Stress, stress-related disease, and emotion regulation. In J.J.Gross(Ed.), Handbook of Emotion Regulation(pp.606-615). New York:Guilford Press.

6.Barrett et al.(2014). A psychological construction account of emotion regulation and dysregulation: The role of situated conceptualizations.  In J.J.Gross(Ed.). Handbook of Emotion Regulation(pp.447-469). New York, NY:The Guilford Press.

7.Lyashevsky,I.(2018). Teaching to Transfer in the Social Emotional Learning Context. Columbia Academic Commons.

8.Lyashevsky,I. & Cesarano,M.(2022). Assessing the Efficacy of the Affectifi Online Platform for Emotional Skill Development. Study presented at the APS conference. Chicago,IL.5/26/22-5/29/22.

9.Brashears,J.,Lyashevsky,I., Cesarano,M.(2024). Using the power of Hollywood for Emotional Skill-building. In preparation.

10.Yeager,D.(2017). Social and Emotional Learning Programs for Adolescents. The Future of Children,27(1),73-94.

Affectifi's key impact goals are to improve learners' social emotional competencies, as well as related measures like psychological health and academic outcomes like absenteeism and graduation rates.

The most direct way in which Affectifi will measure social emotional learning outcomes is by evaluating the exercise data it collects (over 25 exercise types; knowledge-based and skill-based; multiple-choice and open-response) to determine changes in learners’ emotional skills. Unlike most other solutions in the space, ThinkHumanTV is able to achieve precise measurement of a number of these skills, such as aspects of empathy. It does so by using exercises designed on the basis of emotion science principles, such as emotion valence (i.e. emotions’ pleasantness or unpleasantness), that lend themselves to sufficiently objective evaluation. For instance, we may not be able to determine the exact emotion label (such as frustration or anxiety) that would be ‘correct’ in a given case (on ThinkHumanTV such exercises simply show a response distribution with no wrong answer). However, the emotional valence (pleasantness or unpleasantness) of a person’s reaction can be determined with a high degree of confidence. This approach will allow Affectifi to map the changes in certain learner skills over time. 

In addition, Affectifi is working with Prof. Richard Lane, who developed the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS), to integrate the electronic version of the scale into the ThinkHumanTV platform. The eLEAS is a well established measure of emotional awareness, which has been used in numerous studies, and which Affectifi has licensed from the University of Arizona. The eLEAS can help establish ThinkHumanTV users’ baseline levels of EA, as well as changes in their EA over time. 

Affectifi has also been conducting and will continue to conduct efficacy studies to assess the impact of its emotion training solutions, in collaboration with various outside partners including Prof. Lane at the University of Arizona, Prof. Art Lurigio at Loyola University Chicago, and Prof. J. Brashears at LaGuardia Community College in NYC.

As previously discussed, two recent studies showed significant short-term improvements in participants' emotion regulation and emotional self-confidence. A study planned for May of 2024 in partnership with Sesame Workshop will evaluate the usability and SEL impact of the ThinkHumanTV mobile app prototype with 4-5 year olds.

In the coming months, Affectifi plans to conduct additional studies at one or more partner K12 schools to assess the platform’s effects on socio-emotional skills, as well as on longer-term academic and wellness outcomes for students in middle and/or high school. Additionally, the study will examine how teachers and students in the experimental condition(s) perceive the user experience of the ThinkHumanTV platform.

Another important metric is platform adoption and user growth. The planned platform update that will enable training with embedded YouTube clips should improve scalability as more public schools are able to adopt the platform. Thus Affecitifi will be tracking the rate of growth in the number of public schools using the platform and the number of students served, particularly in low income communities.

At present, the ThinkHumanTV training experience is delivered via a browser extension which interfaces with streaming sites. The solution grew out of years of research by Affectifi’s founders who are cognitive science faculty at Columbia Teachers College specializing in social and emotional learning. It is powered by a proprietary, algorithmic AI exercise generation engine which offers unique flexibility in that a user can train with any media narratives in any order while still seamlessly progressing through the training curriculum. For example, one user might choose 'Grey's Anatomcy' and 'Star Wars,' while another may go with 'When They See Us' and 'The Queen’s Gambit', yet both would engage with the appropriate emotion exercises given the content they were watching and their position within the curriculum. The engine was designed using an emotion system model developed by Affectifi's founding team on the basis of extensive psychological research and relies on the emotional ‘mapping’ of narratives (films and TV shows) which is used to generate training exercises. The mapping entails the identification of processes and factors (such as appraisals, goals, beliefs, and needs) involved in characters’ emotional responses in a given scene. Affectifi has filed a patent application for its approach to coupling social emotional training with narrative media. 

The mapping described above creates a unique database that represents the emotional and semantic layer of media narrative. Affectifi has released an online search feature that makes this data directly accessible to users and other 3rd parties in the form of emotional 'moments' (i.e. clips) in streaming titles which can be searched by emotional or contextual keywords.

Affetifi has also developed a system for utilizing the crowdsourced content generated by users to accelerate and expand its library of supported narratives (i.e. films and shows). This represents a first-of-its-kind “twofer” solution for crowd-sourced emotion “translation” of narrative content, whereby Affectifi users function as a “workforce” that enables large-scale emotion mapping of narrative while improving their own emotion knowledge and skills.

In addition, as part of its work to support younger learners Affectifi has developed a mobile application prototype capable of syncing with smart TVs and delivering ThinkHumanTV emotional skills training on a mobile device while watching any streaming content on TV. The app connects to the same API that powers the ThinkHumanTV browser extension. As part of this project, Affectifi has also developed a React Native library which would enable potential 3rd parties, such as streaming services, to integrate ThinkHumanTV training into their apps.

3 Full-time

7 Part-time / Contractor

The company was founded in 2018. We began working on the project full-time in 2019 after receiving our first NSF SBIR grant.

Affectifi’s emphasis on diversity and equity begins with its core team, which is half female, a quarter African-American, and a quarter Latinx. Melissa Cesarano, one of its founders, is a Latinx Woman, and Ilya Lyashevsky is a
a first generation immigrant. As such, both founders are keenly, personally conscious of the importance and value of social and cultural diversity, and are purposeful about ensuring such diversity on their team.

This awareness also extends to the choice of digital narratives that serve as a vehicle for emotion learning. Affectifi is very deliberate in making sure that both the films and TV shows used for training, and the examples used in the curricula, reflect the diversity of its learners and its team.

Affectifi sells ThinkHumanTV subscriptions to K12 schools (B2B SaaS), which are charged $8 per student or $199 per teacher per year, as well as $500-$2000 per school for professional development, which is in line with comparable solutions.

The company has also made limited sales to healthcare providers, and anticipates this will become a more significant market in the future.

Affectifi is also offering online continuing education courses to individual educators at $99-$200 per course. The company has been approved as an official provider in Pennsylvania, has applied in New York and Massachusetts, and is preparing to apply in Virginia. These four states together represent approximately 500K teachers who are required to complete 100-180 continuing education hours every several years.

Affectifi also plans to launch a mobile application aimed at younger children, which will be marketed directly to parents (B2C), who would pay a subscription of $4-8 per month.

Together with Sesame Workshop, Affectifi is also exploring direct integration of its technology with mobile streaming service applications like PBS,
Netflix and Disney+, using an API-as-a-service model where streaming
platforms would pay usage fees for Affectifi’s training API.

Affectifi is a Benefit Corporation formed with the aim of operating as a self-sustaining business. Since its founding in 2018, the company has been funding operations via government grants, equity investment, revenue, and loans. This includes over $1.4M in SBIR grants from the National Science Foundation, as well as nearly $300K raised from institutional investors like Camelback Ventures, Startup Health Ventures, and Visible Hands VC, as well as angels and family and friends.

Affectifi’s is currently selling subscriptions to ThinkHumanTV to K12 schools, which are charged $8 per student or $199 per teacher per year, as well as $500-$2000 per school for professional development. In 2023, the number of Affectifi’s school clients grew 300%, as the company secured paid pilots with over a dozen schools as well as with the NYC Department of Education, and has a presence at over 30 schools in total. The integration of YouTube support is expected to lead to more rapid adoption of the platform at public schools. It was one of the most frequently requested features in hundreds of customer discovery and sales calls, including with several major customers such as the NYC Dept of Education. 

The company has also made limited sales to healthcare providers, and
anticipates this to become a more significant market in the future.

Affectifi is also beginning to offer online continuing education courses to individual educators at $99-$200 per course. Affectifi has been approved as a provider of professional development services in Pennsylvania, has applied for approval in New York and Massachusetts, and is preparing to apply in Virginia. These four states represent approximately 500K teachers who are required to complete 100-180 continuing education hours every several years.

Affectifi has also been developing a mobile application aimed at younger children in collaboration with Sesame Workshop. The application would enable kids aged 4-9 and their parents to build emotional skills while watching content on a TV and/or mobile device rather than a computer. Parents would pay a subscription of $4-8 per month. An internal survey (N=40) showed that 95% of parents with diverse income levels were interested in access to a service like ThinkHumanTV for their kids. Affectifi has also run a social media advertising campaign which showed that it was able to achieve cost per purchase (CPP) rates of $30 from interested parents for a product that has not as yet even launched, with an estimated Lifetime Customer Value of $250.

Together with Sesame, Affectifi is also exploring direct integration of its technology with mobile streaming service applications like PBS, Netflix and Disney+, using an API-as-a-service model where streaming platforms would pay usage fees for Affectifi’s training API.

Affectifi projects reaching breakeven in 2026 on revenues of over $10M.

The company is currently exploring an equity funding round, with active interest from established edtech VCs such as Rethink Education. Any outside funding up to $1M, including the MIT Solve prize, will be 50% matched by an additional NSF grant provided as part of the NSF Phase II SBIR award.