Hear Me Out Cake

Inspiration

With TikTok being a substantial social media communication and community channel, we sought inspiration. Through group discussion on brainstorming ideas, we thought about ice breaker games as a tangible experience we've all had experience with, and looked at how traditional in-person games work. And now with things being hybrid, how can we translate that fun in-person experience into online discussions and their limitations? Moreover, with our backgrounds being club executives in respective clubs, we face challenges when we have online team meetings in place of in-person meetings. Therefore, seeing this, we saw it as an opportunity to innovate, thus the creation of our platform "Here me out..." was developed.

What it does

"TikTok has become a breeding ground for viral party games; short, chaotic, and wildly entertaining. One of the most popular formats is “Hear Me Out,” where players pitch unconventionally attractive people or characters (e.g., “Kung Fu Panda”) and try to win others over with bold reasoning." (slide 2 of our slide deck) We saw an opportunity to innovate and translate the tangible experience of icebreaker games done through in-person TikTok trends into a digital space. With this, we focused on one game, Here Me Out, and how we can translate this gameplay into an online platform. Currently, the trend is gaining popularity and is conducted through a recording on TikTok where players gather together with unconventional opinions of characters and call them out, putting it on the cake. In our application, users can create a lobby, join a hobby, or explore the community feed to see what other people have said. Wanting to create this playful experience, we used a humanized touch to the copywriting, making it more relatable to the users as if having a conversation. During game play, users can live call/chat with each other, upload images from their camera roll, and label each character. Then the app will collect all the data and display each hear me out characters one by one. When it's a player's turn, they can select which stick to use. Once it's displayed on the cake, players in the lobby take a vote, facilitating a prompted conversation. This voting is later calculated in the end with the top 3 craziest choices that people voted for. The screen ends will all the characters displayed on the cake and allow users to save a recording of the session for memories, to share, and also capture a photo.

How we built it

First, we used figjam to ideate, brainstorm, and gather our insights and research. We conducted user interviews with 13 young adults in our target audience, ranging from 18-25. From this, we delegated and built wireframes and mockups in Figma. The prototype and recording of the application were done in Figma as well. We took existing TikTok videos and clipped them together in Capcut (due to time) and created a short introduction to display to the audience viewing our slide deck what this game done in person entails.

Challenges we ran into

Challenges we ran into were the scope of our idea, balancing what we wanted to do with the time limitation we were given. This was also the first time the team had all worked together before, learning each others skillsets and design styles as a collaborative experience was a learning experience.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of what we have achieved in just 24 hours. From scoping an idea, selecting a domain, conducting qualitative research, to wireframing, building high-fidelity mockups, creating a slide deck documentation, and editing a video, this couldn't have been done alone. Collaborating brought out the best in each of our skill set, and we were able to utilize it to create the project you see now.

What we learned

In terms of team collaboration, we learned to communicate effectively, delegating tasks, choosing a domain based on scope and timeline, and collaborating throughout the process. In terms of the project itself, it was valuable for us to get insights from our user interviews. Given the short time frame, we were fortunate to conduct 13 interviews, each helping us validate our core concepts, build a foundation, reduce bias, and ensure we were designing for real users, addressing genuine problems and experiences.

What's next for Axolotl Design Labs - Hear me out

We are thinking of developing this idea further, by creating a platform with the mission that brings together multiple interactive icebreaker games to facilitate authentic conversations that express individual personality through playful connections and memorable experiences.