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   Article

What’s in a Word? Building a Verbose Party Game

What’s in a Word? Building a Verbose Party Game

   A rounded square with two eyes and a smile.

   [22]Haley Johnson, Product Manager,

   [23]Haroon Matties, Product Designer,

   [24]Andrew Thomas, JavaScript Developer,

   [25]Nicole Rymarz, Project Manager, and

   [26]David Eisinger, Development Director

   Article Categories: [27]#News & Culture, [28]#Employee Engagement

   Posted on May 25, 2023
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   Our Pointless Palooza team designed and built a word-association game
   in 48 hours. Here's what we learned (and loved) while doing it.

   Fun group party game. Somehow incorporate AI. Build it quickly. These
   were the constraints we put on our mostly Colorado-based Pointless
   Corp. team before [29]Pointless Palooza. A few of us wanted to partake
   in the old Pointless tradition of trying out another role on the
   project, so simplicity was key. Thankfully, Haley was itching to build
   a digital version of a very fun, but relatively straightforward, game.

   [30]Just One is a collaborative word association game that encourages
   both teamwork and creativity. On a given turn, everyone except one
   player (the Guesser) knows a random mystery word and must attempt to
   get the Guesser to guess the mystery word via one-word hints. The catch
   is that every hint must be unique, so duplicate hints are eliminated
   and not shown to the Guesser.

   Haley mentioned that she often hacked the board game to accommodate
   more than 7 players and thought that doing so added a fun element of
   chaos to the rounds. A digital version of the game would facilitate
   expanding the party and it seemed like an easy enough lift for our
   team.

   It’s easier to play than explain, so mosey on over to [31]verbose.club
   and give it a try. And, if you want to know more about how each of us
   fared going heads down on one project for 48 hours (and counting), read
   on.
   Verbose.club UI

[32]Haley | Pointless Role: Design | Day Job: PM

   My favorite part of building verbose.club was being granted permission
   to focus on one project with my teammates. We hopped on Meets or
   huddles to discuss requirements. Nicole and I jammed in the same Figma
   file or wireframe. I got to drop everything to QA a 600-word word bank.
   Viget has great ways of collaborating remotely, but it was also fun to
   be part of the in-office crew, having late night snacks between cram
   sessions like we were in college again.

   Something I learned: I tried my hand at being a “designer” and learned
   quickly that nothing is too precious. Sometimes the code translates
   things differently. Also, design systems are essential to throwing
   together screens quickly. And Figma has tons of libraries that you can
   use instead of starting from scratch!
     __________________________________________________________________

[33]Haroon | Pointless Role: Dev | Day Job: Product Design

   My favorite part of building verbose.club was stepping into a new role,
   or at least trying to. I got a chance to build out styled components
   and pages for our game with React, Typescript, and Tailwind. Though my
   constant questions for Andrew and David were likely annoying, it was an
   extremely rewarding experience to see a project come to life from
   another perspective.

   Something I learned is that it's best to keep commits atomic, meaning
   contributions to the codebase are small, isolated, and clear. Though a
   best practice for many, this approach made it easier for me as a novice
   to contribute quickly, and likely made it easier for Andrew to fix
   things later.
     __________________________________________________________________

[34]Nicole | Pointless Role: Design | Day Job: PM

   My favorite part of building verbose.club was seeing our team
   immediately dive in with a “we’re in this together” approach. I am
   still relatively new to Viget and it was my first time working with a
   handful of my teammates, so I really appreciated the collaborative
   environment and how everyone was really open to hearing new ideas,
   trying something new, and working together to make something cool.

   Something I learned was how to use [35]Whimsical and [36]Figma to make
   wireframes and designs. I had used these tools before; but, it was my
   first time “building” anything at Viget — and it was super fun. I’m
   glad I got to try something outside of my usual PM role.
     __________________________________________________________________

[37]Andrew | Pointless Role: CEO Dev | Day Job: Dev

   My favorite part of building verbose.club was coordinating work among
   my teammates. With less than 3 days to do everything, we had to hit the
   ground running. To start, our PMs and designer jumped on wireframing
   and design thinking while David brought to life a Rails back-end & API.
   I was in a good spot to act as the messenger between these two lines of
   work: parsing high-level thinking & decisions from the designers into
   information useful to David in crafting the API; then shuttling David’s
   feedback back to the broader team.
   Next up, it was time to build out the user-facing Remix app. We were
   able to split this work into two parallel streams. I built out unstyled
   screens, game business logic, and the necessary glue code, resulting in
   a functional app with a barebones UI. In parallel, Haroon built out
   high-fidelity screens, using static placeholders where dynamic content
   would eventually live. From there, collaborating to merge our work and
   upgrade the UI was a simple task.
   I think our team came out of this project inspired by what can be
   accomplished with smart coordination. We managed to efficiently build
   consensus, parallelize work, and learn from one another — and the
   result speaks for itself.

   Something I learned was that parallelizing a project is tricky and
   communication is key. When multiple streams of work are progressing in
   parallel, decisions are constantly being made — some big, some small —
   and many having more influence than immediately apparent. Keeping all
   contributors 100% in the loop is likely impossible, and certainly
   unrealistic. Smart coordination and communication is the magic sauce
   that makes it all work.
     __________________________________________________________________

[38]David | Pointless Role: Dev | Day Job: Dev

   My favorite part of working on verbose.club was helping from afar. I
   was 1,500 miles and several time zones away from most of the team, so I
   really focused on doing low-level work that would enable the rest of
   the team to be successful: setting up an API, getting the app running
   on Docker for easy local development, and making it straightforward for
   others to deploy code. It was sort of like being the bass player in a
   rad band.

   Something I learned is that [39]Caddy is super legit. Here’s the entire
   web server config file, which automatically sets up HTTPS and proxies
   traffic to our Remix app:
verbose.club

reverse_proxy remix-prod:3001

   Our overall architecture (running with docker compose) looks like this:
   Architecture diagram with Caddy at the top pointing to Remix, pointing
   to Rails, pointing to both Postgres and Redis.
     __________________________________________________________________

   In two days’ time, we had a beautiful, functioning game that we played
   during our Pointless celebration happy hour. Since then, we’ve added
   some cool animations and the ability to pull in AI players — no human
   friends required! So, grab some friends (robot or otherwise) and check
   out [40]verbose.club!

   [41]Haley Johnson

   [42]Haley is a product manager in Viget’s Boulder, CO office. With
   small-agency and large-tech-company experience, she keeps all types of
   projects moving, no matter their size.
   [43]More articles by Haley
   [44]Haroon Matties

   [45]Haroon is a product designer in our HQ office. His appreciation for
   human-centered design informs his approach to researching and building
   intuitive interfaces.
   [46]More articles by Haroon
   [47]Andrew Thomas

   [48]Andrew is a developer in our Boulder, CO, office. He loves building
   sophisticated web applications while utilizing the latest and greatest
   tech.
   [49]More articles by Andrew
   [50]Nicole Rymarz

   [51]Nicole is an observant project manager who thrives on building
   personal connections and successful brand and product experiences.
   [52]More articles by Nicole
   [53]David Eisinger

   [54]David is Viget's managing development director. From our Durham,
   NC, office, he builds high-quality, forward-thinking software for PUMA,
   the World Wildlife Fund, NFLPA, and many others.
   [55]More articles by David

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