www-viget-com-yrczde.txt (16093B)
1 [1] Skip to Main Content 2 [2] Viget 3 4 • [3] Work 5 • [4] Services 6 • [5] Articles 7 • [6] Careers 8 • [7] Contact 9 • Open Menu 10 11 Navigation 12 13 [9] Viget Close 14 15 • Practice 16 • [11] Work 17 • [12] Services 18 • [13] Articles 19 20 We’re a full-service digital agency that’s been helping clients make lasting 21 change since 1999. 22 23 [14] Contact Us 24 25 People 26 27 • [15]Company 28 • [16]Careers 29 • [17]Code of Ethics 30 • [18]Diversity & Inclusion 31 32 More 33 34 • [19]Pointless Corp. 35 • [20]Explorations 36 • [21]Code at Viget 37 38 Featured 39 40 [22] 41 Read the Article: Revolutionizing the Web 42 43 Newsletter 44 45 Revolutionizing the Web 46 47 [23] 48 Read the Article: The Reflection Before Christmas 49 50 Article 51 52 The Reflection Before Christmas 53 54 What’s in a Word? Building a Verbose Party Game 55 56 [final] 57 [24] Haroon Matties [25] David Eisinger 58 59 Haley Johnson, Former Product Manager, 60 61 [26]Haroon Matties, Product Designer, 62 63 Andrew Thomas, Former JavaScript Developer, 64 65 Nicole Rymarz, Former Project Manager, and 66 67 [27]David Eisinger, Development Director 68 69 Article Categories: [28] #News & Culture, [29] #Employee Engagement 70 71 Posted on May 25, 2023 72 73 • [30] 74 Share 75 • [31] 76 Share 77 • [32] 78 Post 79 80 Our Pointless Palooza team designed and built a word-association game in 48 81 hours. Here's what we learned (and loved) while doing it. 82 83 O u r P o i n t l e s s P a l o o z a t e a m d e s i g n e d a n d b u i l t a 84 w o r d - a s s o c i a t i o n g a m e i n 4 8 h o u r s . H e r e ' s w h a t 85 w e l e a r n e d ( a n d l o v e d ) w h i l e d o i n g i t . 86 87 Fun group party game. Somehow incorporate AI. Build it quickly. These were the 88 constraints we put on our mostly Colorado-based Pointless Corp. team before 89 [33]Pointless Palooza. A few of us wanted to partake in the old Pointless 90 tradition of trying out another role on the project, so simplicity was key. 91 Thankfully, Haley was itching to build a digital version of a very fun, but 92 relatively straightforward, game. 93 94 [34]Just One is a collaborative word association game that encourages both 95 teamwork and creativity. On a given turn, everyone except one player (the 96 Guesser) knows a random mystery word and must attempt to get the Guesser to 97 guess the mystery word via one-word hints. The catch is that every hint must be 98 unique, so duplicate hints are eliminated and not shown to the Guesser. 99 100 Haley mentioned that she often hacked the board game to accommodate more than 7 101 players and thought that doing so added a fun element of chaos to the rounds. A 102 digital version of the game would facilitate expanding the party and it seemed 103 like an easy enough lift for our team. 104 105 It’s easier to play than explain, so mosey on over to [35]verbose.club and give 106 it a try. And, if you want to know more about how each of us fared going heads 107 down on one project for 48 hours (and counting), read on. 108 109 [662shots_so-1] 110 111 [36]Haley | Pointless Role: Design | Day Job: PM 112 113 My favorite part of building verbose.club was being granted permission to focus 114 on one project with my teammates. We hopped on Meets or huddles to discuss 115 requirements. Nicole and I jammed in the same Figma file or wireframe. I got to 116 drop everything to QA a 600-word word bank. Viget has great ways of 117 collaborating remotely, but it was also fun to be part of the in-office crew, 118 having late night snacks between cram sessions like we were in college again. 119 120 Something I learned: I tried my hand at being a “designer” and learned quickly 121 that nothing is too precious. Sometimes the code translates things differently. 122 Also, design systems are essential to throwing together screens quickly. And 123 Figma has tons of libraries that you can use instead of starting from scratch! 124 125 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 126 127 [37]Haroon | Pointless Role: Dev | Day Job: Product Design 128 129 My favorite part of building verbose.club was stepping into a new role, or at 130 least trying to. I got a chance to build out styled components and pages for 131 our game with React, Typescript, and Tailwind. Though my constant questions for 132 Andrew and David were likely annoying, it was an extremely rewarding experience 133 to see a project come to life from another perspective. 134 135 Something I learned is that it's best to keep commits atomic, meaning 136 contributions to the codebase are small, isolated, and clear. Though a best 137 practice for many, this approach made it easier for me as a novice to 138 contribute quickly, and likely made it easier for Andrew to fix things later. 139 140 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 141 142 [38]Nicole | Pointless Role: Design | Day Job: PM 143 144 My favorite part of building verbose.club was seeing our team immediately dive 145 in with a “we’re in this together” approach. I am still relatively new to Viget 146 and it was my first time working with a handful of my teammates, so I really 147 appreciated the collaborative environment and how everyone was really open to 148 hearing new ideas, trying something new, and working together to make something 149 cool. 150 151 Something I learned was how to use [39]Whimsical and [40]Figma to make 152 wireframes and designs. I had used these tools before; but, it was my first 153 time “building” anything at Viget — and it was super fun. I’m glad I got to try 154 something outside of my usual PM role. 155 156 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 157 158 [41]Andrew | Pointless Role: CEO Dev | Day Job: Dev 159 160 My favorite part of building verbose.club was coordinating work among my 161 teammates. With less than 3 days to do everything, we had to hit the ground 162 running. To start, our PMs and designer jumped on wireframing and design 163 thinking while David brought to life a Rails back-end & API. I was in a good 164 spot to act as the messenger between these two lines of work: parsing 165 high-level thinking & decisions from the designers into information useful to 166 David in crafting the API; then shuttling David’s feedback back to the broader 167 team. 168 169 Next up, it was time to build out the user-facing Remix app. We were able to 170 split this work into two parallel streams. I built out unstyled screens, game 171 business logic, and the necessary glue code, resulting in a functional app with 172 a barebones UI. In parallel, Haroon built out high-fidelity screens, using 173 static placeholders where dynamic content would eventually live. From there, 174 collaborating to merge our work and upgrade the UI was a simple task. 175 176 I think our team came out of this project inspired by what can be accomplished 177 with smart coordination. We managed to efficiently build consensus, parallelize 178 work, and learn from one another — and the result speaks for itself. 179 180 Something I learned was that parallelizing a project is tricky and 181 communication is key. When multiple streams of work are progressing in 182 parallel, decisions are constantly being made — some big, some small — and many 183 having more influence than immediately apparent. Keeping all contributors 100% 184 in the loop is likely impossible, and certainly unrealistic. Smart coordination 185 and communication is the magic sauce that makes it all work. 186 187 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 188 189 [42]David | Pointless Role: Dev | Day Job: Dev 190 191 My favorite part of working on verbose.club was helping from afar. I was 1,500 192 miles and several time zones away from most of the team, so I really focused on 193 doing low-level work that would enable the rest of the team to be successful: 194 setting up an API, getting the app running on Docker for easy local 195 development, and making it straightforward for others to deploy code. It was 196 sort of like being the bass player in a rad band. 197 198 Something I learned is that [43]Caddy is super legit. Here’s the entire web 199 server config file, which automatically sets up HTTPS and proxies traffic to 200 our Remix app: 201 202 verbose.club 203 204 reverse_proxy remix-prod:3001 205 206 Our overall architecture (running with docker compose) looks like this: 207 208 [verbose-arch] 209 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 210 211 In two days’ time, we had a beautiful, functioning game that we played during 212 our Pointless celebration happy hour. Since then, we’ve added some cool 213 animations and the ability to pull in AI players — no human friends required! 214 So, grab some friends (robot or otherwise) and check out [44]verbose.club! 215 216 [45] Haroon Matties 217 218 [46]Haroon is a product designer in our Boulder, CO office. His appreciation 219 for human-centered design informs his approach to researching and building 220 intuitive interfaces. 221 222 [47]More articles by Haroon 223 [48] David Eisinger 224 225 [49]David is Viget's managing development director. From our Durham, NC, 226 office, he builds high-quality, forward-thinking software for PUMA, the World 227 Wildlife Fund, NFLPA, and many others. 228 229 [50]More articles by David 230 231 Related Articles 232 233 • [51] 234 Panel by Panel: A Comically Fun Way to Use Figma 235 236 Article 237 238 Panel by Panel: A Comically Fun Way to Use Figma 239 240 Gray Gill 241 242 • [52] 243 The Enduring Point of Pointless Corp. 244 245 Article 246 247 The Enduring Point of Pointless Corp. 248 249 Brian Williams 250 251 • [53] 252 Plan a Killer Party with Thrillr 253 254 Article 255 256 Plan a Killer Party with Thrillr 257 258 Addison DeLancey 259 260 The Viget Newsletter 261 262 Nobody likes popups, so we waited until now to recommend our newsletter, 263 featuring thoughts, opinions, and tools for building a better digital world. 264 [54]Read the current issue. 265 266 [55]Subscribe Here (opens in new window) 267 268 Site Footer 269 270 Have an unsolvable problem or audacious idea? 271 272 Let’s get to work 273 274 [56] Contact Us [57] [email protected] [58] 703.891.0670 275 276 • Practice 277 • [59]Work 278 • [60]Services 279 • [61]Articles 280 281 • People 282 • [62]Company 283 • [63]Careers 284 • [64]Code of Ethics 285 • [65]Diversity & Inclusion 286 287 • More 288 • [66]Pointless Corp. 289 • [67]Explorations 290 • [68]Code at Viget 291 292 Sign Up For Our Newsletter 293 294 A curated periodical featuring thoughts, opinions, and tools for building a 295 better digital world. 296 297 [69] Check it out 298 299 Social Links 300 301 [70] Viget 302 303 • [71] 304 • [72] 305 • [73] 306 • [74] 307 • [75] 308 • [76] 309 310 Office Locations 311 312 • [77]Washington DC Metro 313 • [78]Durham, NC 314 • [79]Boulder, CO 315 • [80]Chattanooga, TN 316 317 © 1999 – 2024 Viget Labs, LLC. 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