Icebreakers.site – Conversation Starters

  • My team at work begins each planning session with an icebreaker-- it's a great way to get to know everyone a little better, especially since we are all remote and located around the globe. Each time it's my turn to come up with a question, I end up googling for "icebreaker questions" and have to sort through decent ones ("What skill do you think everyone should have?") to semi-not-great-for-work-ones ("Name something you hate about your boss.") to inappropriate ones ("What do you like best about women's bodies?") to outright illegal ones ("Are you religious?").

    Since I'm lazy and wanted one place to easily give me a question to propose to the group, I made a progressive web app that randomly picks a question out of a pool of around 700 questions (that I think I've mostly vetted to be considered "decent" questions). The neat thing about it being a PWA is it can be installed as a Chrome app (or saved to a home screen on a mobile phone) and it will still work offline.

    Full disclosure-- it's free to use, and there's no ads or anything, but I do have a Google analytics script on it, simply out of curiosity if anyone is using it. So if you are anti-Google or anti-analytics, don't go there. Otherwise, I hope it sparks some good conversations for you and lets you learn a little more about your fellow teammates.

  • I like it! Good and minimalist implementation :) Also, you can improve it by adding "how to finish a conversation" feature ;)