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Read the Article: The Reflection Before Christmas

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The Reflection Before Christmas

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

[final]
[24] Haroon Matties [25] David Eisinger

Haley Johnson, Former Product Manager,

[26]Haroon Matties, Product Designer,

Andrew Thomas, Former JavaScript Developer,

Nicole Rymarz, Former Project Manager, and

[27]David Eisinger, Development Director

Article Categories: [28] #News & Culture, [29] #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.

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
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
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 .

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 
[33]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.

[34]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 [35]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.

[662shots_so-1]

[36]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!

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[37]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.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[38]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 [39]Whimsical and [40]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.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[41]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.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[42]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 [43]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:

[verbose-arch]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

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 [44]verbose.club!

[45] Haroon Matties

[46]Haroon is a product designer in our Boulder, CO office. His appreciation
for human-centered design informs his approach to researching and building
intuitive interfaces.

[47]More articles by Haroon
[48] David Eisinger

[49]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.

[50]More articles by David

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