Lauren T. Zerbin

Imagine yourself stranded on a remote island. You must build a boat to escape but do not know how. Your only way to communicate with the outside world is a broken radio - you can send audio, but only receive vibrations. Your and person on the other side of the line's goal is to construct escape vessel out of LEGO bricks.

Buzz-Words is a cooperative multiplayer icebreaker application designed specifically to address the inherent communication asymmetries of hybrid meetings. While remote work has become standard, hybrid team-building activities often unintentionally exclude remote participants because traditional icebreakers heavily rely on physical co-presence and shared visual context.

The experience places the players in a unique, interdependent scenario, introducing two primary asymmetric challenges:

Task Asymmetry: The co-located group (the “stranded”) has access to physical LEGO bricks but no building instructions. The remote participant (the “mechanic”) has the instructions but no visual access to the bricks.
Communication Asymmetry: Co-located players can use a push-to-talk microphone to send audio messages, but the remote player can only respond using a customized vibro-tactile (haptic) interface.

The core gameplay relies on restricted communication, forcing users to negotiate meaning and establish common ground:

Vibro-Tactile Interface

Remote users transmit complex instructions through haptic feedback alone. They can manipulate the amplitude, frequency, and waveform (sine, square, sawtooth, or constant) of the phone's linear resonant actuators.

Push-to-Talk Audio

Co-located players use a push-to-talk microphone on their smartphones. This ensures communication is deliberate and allows them to converse locally before transmitting to the remote mechanic.

Custom LEGO Sets

Three custom, 20-brick LEGO sets (a raft, a motorboat, and a cargo ship) were designed specifically for the stranded scenario, each featuring an unique piece as an identifier.

The project was built using the Flutter framework, utilizing a low-latency client-server architecture to ensure high reliability when transmitting audio and vibration signals between the distinct player groups.

To understand how users navigate this unique communication barrier, a user study (N=24 participants) was conducted. It tested whether providing a pre-constructed haptic language—similar to Morse code—altered the experience compared to forcing users to invent their own communication methods on the fly. Participants completed rounds of Buzz-Words, building different sets under time pressure. Metrics collected included completion time, communication patterns (waveforms and frequencies used), and the Networked Minds Measure of Social Presence.

The evaluation revealed distinct behavioral shifts and valuable insights into asymmetric collaboration:

Immediate Common Ground vs. Creative Constraint: Providing a predefined language reduced initial confusion, but it occasionally “locked in” players, constraining creative problem-solving later in the task.
Negotiating Strategies: Users without a provided language faced higher initial frustration but actively negotiated their own efficient communication strategies, often exploring a wider variety of waveforms.
Highly Engaging Challenge: Participants in both conditions found the icebreaker highly enjoyable. They appreciated the unusual, constrained nature of the communication, noting that it created a strong sense of interdependence rather than just frustration.

Buzz-Words successfully demonstrated that intentionally embracing and designing for asymmetry—rather than trying to eliminate it—can lead to highly engaging, collaborative experiences that truly integrate remote participants into hybrid team-building activities.