Office Hack #14 — Virtual High Five
Envoy is all about making things easier and more fun in the office. In that spirit, we are proud to bring you our new Envoy Office Hacks podcast series. Every week, we deliver the coolest, most ingenious, and just plain fun fixes people have invented to improve efficiency and productivity in their workplace.
Today’s Envoy Office Hack is the perfect solution for those who wish they had more time to show appreciation to their staff and colleagues.
Texas-based branding and web design company, Bottle Rocket, has found a whole new way to distribute high-fives to its team. It’s quick, wide-sweeping and as easy as the slap of a hand.
Listen to this story on our Office Hacks podcast.
Bottle Rocket hacked an Amazon Dash Button, tucked it up into a rubber hand, and mounted it on a wall.
An Amazon Dash Button is a physical button that is connected to the web. When you push the button, it triggers an action on the internet — traditionally ordering the delivery of something like laundry detergent on Amazon.
“It’s a brilliant instant-ordering idea, but we realized you could use the same thing to trigger off a lot of different type of actions, digital actions.”
Michael Griffith, Creative Director at Bottle Rocket
As you can see in this diagram, when the hand is slapped a high five animated gif is randomly selected, pulled from a pool of homemade animated images, and sent via HipChat to the deserving team. This is what the result looks like.
The best part? Late-night team bonding through the creation of these high-five gifs. Some are pretty straight-forward, but others are, well, a little weird.
“…we got really creative as it got later and later. I think the best virtual high fives were filmed around 3 or 4 in the morning. Those were filmed with an app called Giphy Cam.”
Michael Griffith, Creative Director at Bottle Rocket
The only downfall of this hack? It’s own popularity. According to Bottle Rocket’s Michael Griffith, the hack has been a bigger hit than expected.
“The first hundred high fives are really cool. The next ten thousand can be a little annoying.”
How to hack it
If you’d like to set up a virtual high five hack in your office, here’s what you’ll need:
Ingredients
- Amazon Dash Button ($5 each)
- Rubber Hand ($10)
- Giphy Cam App (free)
- HipChat or similar team messaging service (cost varies)
- Total cost — approx. $15–20.
Recipe
A quick Google search yields numerous ways in which to hack an Amazon Dash Button. Here’s one to get you started.
Listen & Subscribe
You can listen to the full story in the Envoy Office Hacks podcast:
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More Office Hacks
If you enjoyed this hack be sure to check out other Envoy Office Hacks, including:
A mobile meeting space in a rolling room from white-hot software start-up, Slack:
And one office’s creative solution to boring office walls — the Wall of Lego:
And a social psychology experiment in healthy eating from Social Print Studio:
Or how about a robotic sales gong to crank up team spirit in the office:
And then there’s Hootsuite’s office hack: an open office turned ski village.
Never underestimate the power of taxidermy on company culture…
Pub Nub hacks its way from annoying coffee woes… to website.
Mozilla takes something old and makes it new again.
One man’s getaway is another man’s office.
A big orange slide makes getting around this office a whole lot of fun.
No office boardroom is complete without some paddles and a net.
And here’s THE perfect hack for gross office kitchens everywhere.
Here’s a hack for the kid in all of us.
Got an Office Hack you’d like to share? Do you know a stroke of genius that has made an office more productive or fun? You could be featured in a future Envoy Office Hack — let us know about it at officehacks@envoy.com.
