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. Instead of trying to artificially eliminate this imbalance, Buzz-Words actively embraces it by assigning distinct, interdependent roles and restricting communication channels to foster forced collaboration and shared ground.

Built using the Flutter framework with a low-latency client-server architecture, the application facilitates a time-pressured collaborative puzzle. In our gameplay scenario, the co-located group has physical LEGO bricks but no building instructions, while the remote participant has the instructions but no visual access to the bricks. The core mechanic relies on restricted, asymmetric communication: the co-located players can use a push-to-talk microphone feature on their smartphones to send audio messages, but the remote player can only respond using a customized vibro-tactile interface. By manipulating the amplitude, frequency, and waveform (sine, square, sawtooth, or constant) of their phone’s linear resonant actuators, the remote user must transmit complex building instructions through haptic feedback alone.

To understand how users navigate this unique communication barrier, we conducted a user study with 24 participants, testing 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. While quantitative metrics for task completion and social presence showed no statistically significant differences between the two conditions, qualitative observations revealed distinct behavioral shifts. Providing a predefined language reduced initial confusion and provided immediate common ground, but it occasionally constrained creative problem-solving later in the task. Conversely, users without a provided language faced higher initial frustration but actively negotiated their own efficient communication strategies. Overall, participants found the icebreaker highly engaging, noting that the challenging, constrained communication successfully fostered a strong sense of mutual reliance.