Client
Google
What we delivered
Soundscape
Creative team
Instrument Agency
Left Field Labs
&Walsh
Google events and experience team
Peter Van Straten
I/O, Google’s annual technology conference, brings the world’s developers together to share, connect, and learn. To generate awareness and excitement for this year’s event, We created a globally collaborative and sharable puzzle with a soundscape that honors a precursor to modern computing: weaving.
With the I/O 2023 puzzle, we worked with Google to reflect the culture of developers — just like we’ve done in all our work for I/O over the years — and honor the unexpected ways that programming has shaped our world.
How it works
This year’s save-the-date experience includes seven individual puzzles that vary in difficulty and can be solved in any order. Individual players can solve all seven puzzles, earning badges along the way — yet the date itself isn’t revealed until a threshold of solves is achieved globally.
Everything ties together in the end
On launch day, the puzzle went live with a cryptic but intriguing social media post along with hints and a unique hashtag to inspire collaboration and knowledge sharing.
Google reports that within minutes there were solution attempts on three continents. The first person to solve the entire puzzle did so in just under two hours. Before the threshold of solves was achieved to finally unlock the 2023 I/O date, the puzzle had players in over 160 countries — and people continue to try. There was even an entire article written to help others decode each puzzle so as to unlock the date for everyone.
