Icebreaker: Fostering Team Connections in Remote Settings

Icebreaker Logo

Project Overview

Icebreaker tackles the challenge of maintaining team connections in remote work environments. It facilitates engaging, low-pressure conversations among team members, helping to preserve and strengthen team bond.

Visit Icebreaker to learn more.

Origin Story

Icebreaker was born in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. As my friends and I struggled to maintain team connections in newly remote settings, I saw an opportunity to create a solution.

What started as a simple idea evolved into two versions: a rapid response to immediate needs (2020), and an AI-assisted evolution pushing the boundaries of what a PM can create. (2024)

How It Works

  1. Go to the Slack channel where you want to add Icebreaker.
  2. Message @icebreaker in the channel to activate the Slack app.
  3. Invite the app into the channel.
  4. Use the /ice command to start an icebreaker.
  5. Select an icebreaker category: 🏡 Cozy, ✨ Dreamy, or 🌶️ Spicy.
  6. Use the shuffle button until you find a question you like.
  7. Hit post and learn something new about your coworkers!
Icebreaker V2 Demo

Impact and Personal Experience

Icebreaker has become an essential tool for every remote team I've worked with. It's amazing to see how a simple question can spark meaningful conversations and bring team members closer together.

Metrics (Updated 7/29/2024)

  • V1 Active Workspaces: 174
  • V1 Active Users (past 28 days): 39
  • V2 Active Workspaces: 2 (Early stage)
  • V2 Active Users (past 28 days): 3 (Early stage)

Development Journey

V1 (Launched May 2020).

Built with Darklang, V1 was a quick solution to an urgent need. It focused on core functionality, providing immediate value to newly-remote teams.

V2 (Launched July 2024).

V2 represents a significant evolution of Icebreaker, reimagined and rebuilt with the assistance of AI. As a product manager with limited coding experience, I harnessed the power of Claude.ai to guide me through the entire development process. From ideation to deployment, Claude.ai acted as my virtual engineering team, helping me:

  1. Design a robust application architecture
  2. Write and debug JavaScript code for both frontend and backend
  3. Implement best practices for security and scalability
  4. Set up hosting and database management on Azure
  5. Troubleshoot issues and optimize performance
  6. Update the marketing site to reflect the new capabilities

This innovative approach allowed me to single-handedly bring this product to market.

Question Curation

All of the questions are from Rob Walker's public icebreaker list that has been contributed to by the readers of his The Art of Noticing Newsletter. Rob is also the author of The Art of Noticing.