The Challenge

Brainstorming should be a way of unleashing creativity and revealing promising ideas that could transform a project, an activity or a business. Unfortunately brainstorming sessions rarely live up to these lofty expectations. They usually can take up a lot of time, particularly if people are brought together from different locations. They can suffer from group think or be suffocated by hierarchy.  And it can be difficult and time-consuming to assess the ideas and prioritise action.

250 Ideas in 15 minutes, WOW. We have never done that before!

- Project Manager, Google

The Platform

HatParty is a multiplayer real-time game focused on truly transforming a brainstorming sessions. Project members come together to generate ideas in a fun and insightful environment. What’s more the process also enables the team to pick the very best solutions quickly and painlessly.

The racing is really intense and I like it, it helps you come up with many ideas within a short space of time.

- Concept Developer, Google

Core Features

  • Racing – Competition between players to be the first to reach a certain goal. Racing is used to generate high amounts of ideas within a short space of time. The more ideas submitted the further ahead the player is within the race.
  • Social Points – players earn points from the response rate of others. When players suggest new ideas they earn point when another player responds. Ideas can then be assigned value by the reputation service using the sum of other player responses to the idea.
  • Levels – HatParty awards a player a level using Hats. The player’s avatar begins the game wearing a level 1 hat. As the player progresses and earns more points, new levels are unlocked. Other players can see who is making valuable contributions to the session by the type of hat the player is wearing.
  • Recommender Systems – Inspirational Search, Reputation and Goal setting provide players interesting context related content and performance goals which give the player a chance to earn extra rewards and unlock new levels (resulting in new hats).

Beyond State of the Art

HatParty uses competitive game mechanics in order to influence user behaviour, driving creative output and enabling players to connect together through the game’s facilitated social environment. HatParty uses COLLAGE services to help facilitate its brainstorming sessions, as well as give an extra help in the ideation stage to help players produce interesting ideas