52W: W9 - Mystery Stamp

March 6, 2023

I decided to centralize my posts on my own website according to POSSE principles.
The original post is on Substack here: https://52weeks.substack.com/p/week-9-mystery-stamp

This week I created an interactive puzzle quest that I distributed at a party.

Tools I used:

  • A set of vintage stamps ordered online

  • Pine Tools Image Splitter - to split my stamp collection image into individual stamp images

  • QR code generator

  • Canva - to design the cards

  • Fedex - to print the cards

  • Jotform - to design the game

  • Glue and scissors - to put it all together and slice the cards

Context

I was invited to a housewarming party with the instructions to come as a ‘muse’. I wanted to play with the definition of muse: ‘a source of inspiration for a creative artist’. At parties I often think about the concept of a conversational or social flow state, so I wanted to create something that might elicit and inspire such a state while remaining playful and interactive.

Process

One of my several half-started-maybe-one-day week projects involves a giant QR code that you can see from satellite imagery as the first breadcrumb in a quest. I decided to implement a less ambitious normal sized QR code for this week. A fun, fairly obvious thing I discovered this week is that half a QR code doesn’t work, but it does get people motivated to find the other half and follow the link.

(If you hold you camera over the video you’ll see the QR works at the end)

So I designed a business card that I could cut down the middle to create 2 halves to be rejoined.

I’ve blurred the QR code here because I’ve since changed the link

I also got a pack of vintage stamps (with x2 of each kind) to put on the other side to help people find their missing stampmate.

Next came a bunch of manual labour to print the cards, glue on the stamps, write on a secret unique 6 digit codes on each card, and finally slice and pack them for the party.

So I had 50 half cards, meaning 25 potential stamp mates. Finding your matching stamp and scanning the code took you to a form (created in Jotform because Google Forms didn’t have the conditional logic I needed). The form had a few connection prompts and then asked for the stamp and the unique card code before unlocking the ‘passphrase’. I asked people to come find me with the passphrase for a special prize.

At the party, I was thrilled to see people’s eyes light up when they received a stamp half. This was the first time I’d put something I’ve built in front of more than a small group of people, and I quickly saw how powerful it is to get lots of feedback very quickly. Some people (the more experienced puzzlers) quickly understood the premise and started hunting for others. Others were confused, either they didn’t see the QR code, didn’t recognize it as half a QR code, or didn’t get that they should find a second stamp.

Also, I got stuck (willingly) chatting with people and I realised that I was a bottleneck, and the game would only work when all the stamps were distributed, but I still held half in my pocket. I enlisted people to help distribute (although I should have screened the distributors, because they then looked at all the ones I gave them to try to get a match) but it would have been better to hand them out at the front door as people entered, or when they dropped their coat, or something similar. Another factor was that there were 200+ people at the party, and having to find a single match when only 1/4 of the people even had a stamp at all was a tough slog. Very few people actually found their match.

Fortunately, I was invited to another party the following night, so I used the opportunity to improve the game. Instead of 25 sets of 2 matching stamps, I changed it to 10 sets of 6 matching stamps, so each stamp half had 5 other matching opportunities (although actually only 3, because a top half needs to match a bottom half).

This time I used fruit:

I also made the quiz easier by removing the 6 digit passcode section and letting any QR code combination get to the end. I also updated the questions to be a bit more interesting. Sadly, we didn’t make it to the second party in the end, so I didn’t get to test this version, but I still have it ready.

Learnings

  • People love something to do at a party, especially if it is an excuse to talk to strangers

  • Things that are obvious to me aren’t necessarily obvious to others out in the wild

  • Simple is better - I had too many complicating steps in the puzzle at first

  • Getting fast feedback is essential. I’m working on rapid prototyping each week, and putting things in front of humans early lets me update sooner

  • Next time I use a QR code I will send it to a parked domain and then redirect it as I need. Here I printed 100 cards to a link that I had no control over, this made things harder to iterate

Next steps

  • Try the fruity version of the quest

  • Make a big scale quest