The Handoff
A 15-minute communication exercise for two or more people, played on phones. Build a picture, describe it in words, pass your phone to the left, and rebuild someone else's from their words alone. Then compare. Everyone thinks they were clear.
How to run it
Everyone opens this page on their own phone. The person running it opens it on a laptop or a projector and taps Run the session, which has a group planner, a timer with the words to read out, and the debrief. When the facilitator says go, everyone taps Start building at the same moment. It works for any group of two or more. Phones only ever move one seat to the left, so nobody sits out and nobody waits for a turn.
What it shows
Writers describe something they built themselves, so they know it too well to see what they left out. Readers can't ask questions, so they guess, and a guess looks like understanding until the reveal. Most misses are the same few: no shared starting point, a word that means different things to two people, and the obvious step nobody wrote down.
What it does not show
It is one short task under time pressure. A low match says this handoff failed. It does not say who failed, and it is not a measure of anyone's communication skill. Builds differ in difficulty, so compare the stories, not the scores.
Where it comes from
It is adapted from Write It Do It, a Science Olympiad event where one partner writes a description of a built object and the other builds it without seeing it. This version is not affiliated with Science Olympiad. Builds and words stay on each phone and are never sent to us.