Signal Blitz
A daily UX metrics game about speed & accuracy
Signal Blitz flips usability testing on its head.
A fun usability game to test your skills.
Instead of asking users to find things, designers play from the user's seat. You get a directive, a real interface, and one job: find the hotspot as fast and as accurately as you can.
Every click becomes a signal. Every second matters.
Each game includes three related questions built around a shared theme.
For each question, you see a website screenshot, get a single directive, like "Click where you would go to view the park calendar", click where you think the answer lives, and the clock starts immediately.
The goal is not to be perfect, but to be fast and close. Tension.
Signal Blitz started as a simple idea inspired by games like GeoGuessr. We had fun trying to place a location from limited clues and wondered what would happen if we applied that same mechanic to screenshots and UX metrics.
So we built it.
The game was mapped quickly, vibe coded end to end, and built largely with AI. Visuals were crafted in Figma to shape something that feels intentional, playful, and worth coming back to.
Under the fun is a serious idea: helping people experience UX metrics instead of reading about them.
Play the game
A fun, vibe coded game to test your usability skills
What Signal Blitz Measures
We wanted to introduce UX metrics without lectures or dashboards. You feel them by participating in the usability process.
Success
Measured by how close your click is to the intended hotspot. Closer clicks earn more points. Misses still count. Guessing still teaches. This mirrors real user behavior where intent exists even when accuracy does not.
Time on Task
Measured by how long it takes you to commit to a decision. Fast confidence scores higher than slow certainty. This reveals hesitation, scanning cost, and cognitive load without asking a single survey question.
Traditional usability testing watches users struggle. Signal Blitz lets product and designers experience that struggle themselves!
- Ambiguous labels slow you down
- Overloaded navigation increases hesitation
- Visual hierarchy shapes your first instinct
- Familiar patterns bias your clicks
You stop designing for what "should" work and start noticing what actually pulls attention.
Check out the leaderboard
See how difficult website tasks are by comparing how each task stacks up.
See the Leaderboard
What are UX Metrics?
UX metrics measure how people feel and behave when they encounter your concept. They turn reactions into design signals you can track, compare, and improve.
Our open Glare framework groups metrics into three buckets:
- Attitudinal
- Behavioral
- Performance
Together, these signals help you see:
- Do people get it quickly
- Does the message create trust
- Where effort or confusion appears
- What drives people to continue
- How the concept stacks up across variants
UX metrics help you stay focused on what actually moves product and marketing outcomes forward. Metrics sharpen your story. They show where users stumble, where they succeed, and where the business gains or loses momentum. They make design decisions easier to explain and easier to defend.
See the UX metrics that matter.
Use the 28 metrics that show where people get stuck, where they lean in, and what needs work.
Check out UX metrics
How did we build it?
Signal Blitz started as a simple idea: turn UX instincts into a fast, playable signal. From there, the goal was speed without sloppiness.
About 80 to 90 percent of the code was generated with AI, using Cursor as the primary build environment.
- Plan mode handled the big pieces like game structure, scoring logic, and routing.
- Agent mode handled smaller tweaks like copy changes, naming updates, and quick refactors.
Design & Build Process
- We started with rough code in Cursor, shaped the screens with visual design in Figma, then iterated back and forth until the visuals and behavior aligned.
- AI did most of the heavy lifting, but it was never left unsupervised. It handled the core functionality well: game flow, scoring calculations, callbacks, and performance optimizations.
- The scoring logic is a pure function that measures distance, hotspots, and timing. That math required tighter prompts and human guidance, but once aligned, AI supported it effectively.
Where AI fell short
Where AI fell short was visual judgment and guardrails. Styling, layout polish, and on-screen feel were handled manually. AI also tends to overuse React state and effects, which can introduce performance issues, so those areas were reviewed and corrected by hand. Security was another clear boundary. Admin access and password checks were moved server-side to avoid front-end exposure.
The result is a fully functioning game built in hours, not days. AI accelerated the build, but human judgment shaped the experience, enforced constraints, and owned the final decisions.
Lessons from building the game
AI is powerful at execution and scale, but quality still depends on knowing when to step in, refine, and take responsibility.
See the UX metrics that matter.
Use the 28 metrics that show where people get stuck, where they lean in, and what needs work.
Check out UX metricsReady to Build Something That Actually Works?
We help teams design products and prototypes using the same experimental approach as this game. If you want clearer decisions, fewer surprises, and work that creates real lift, we can help you put it in motion.
Let's Talk About Your Project