The Viral Color Test That’s Taking Over the Internet: How a Father-Son Duo Built a 30 Million-Play Gaming Sensation

You might think you’re good at remembering colors. But Geoff Teehan, a former VP of design at Meta, has data that says otherwise. What started as a hackathon side project with an AI coding tool has exploded into a phenomenon that’s racked up nearly 30 million plays and 20 million visits across just four browser-based mini-games—all in under 90 days. Welcome to Dialed, the website that’s making people question how well they can truly recall a shade of red, a tone’s frequency, or even a simple shape.

How a College Professor’s Throwaway Comment Sparked a Viral Business

It all began with an observation from an old college professor. Teehan remembers a conversation where the professor noted that humans are notoriously bad at recalling colors. “They think they’re really good at it, but you show them a color and then they go to a paint store and try to pick it out, and they forget it,” Teehan shared with Fast Company. That seed of an idea stayed with him for years.

During a hackathon, Teehan decided to put that theory to the test. Using two of the hottest AI tools in the developer ecosystem—Cursor and Claude—he “vibe-coded” a simple color-matching game. The premise is deceptively simple: the game flashes a target color for a few seconds. Then, it disappears. Your job is to recreate it using sliders for hue, saturation, and brightness. The closer you get, the higher your score.

The Game Mechanics That Hooked Millions

Dialed’s core appeal lies in its minimalism. There are no instructions. No sign-ups or logins. No app to download. No onboarding. As Teehan puts it, “You just click a link, and you’re playing.” This frictionless experience is a masterclass in reducing user barrier to zero.

• Color game: Memorize a color, then recreate it using a custom controls interface.
• Sound game: Listen to a tone’s frequency, then match it as closely as possible.
• Time game: Watch an interval, then replicate its duration.
• Shape game: Observe a geometric shape, then reconstruct it from memory.

Each game follows the same formula: perceive a stimulus, then re-create it from memory using simple inputs or controls. Players are scored instantly, can share results, and compete against friends.

What the Data Reveals About Human Perception

Now, with millions of plays under its belt, Dialed has generated a treasure trove of data about how people perceive and recall sensory inputs. Teehan revealed several unexpected findings:

• Easiest colors to remember: Vivid blues and greens top the list. People can come surprisingly close to matching these hues.
• Hardest colors to remember: Cyans and reds cause the most trouble. Why? The data suggests these colors play tricks on our visual memory.
• Pastels vs. vivid colors: Pastels are 7% harder to match than their more saturated counterparts. The nuance of lightness and saturation appears to be a cognitive hurdle.

This isn’t just trivia for armchair psychologists. For anyone working in visual design, branding, or user experience—especially B2B SaaS companies with complex dashboards or data visualization tools—these insights are actionable. If your product relies on users differentiating between shades, you now know which color families demand extra attention.

From a Hackathon Side Project to a Real Business

The original color game launched in February of this year. Teehan shared it on Threads and X, and within days, it hit half a million plays. “It grew just way faster than I expected,” he says. Recognizing the momentum, he brought his son, Sam, on board to run and scale the site full time. The goal? Turn a viral toy into a sustainable business.

Since then, the site has expanded rapidly:

• March: Sound frequency matching game launched.
• April: Time interval matching game launched.
• This past Tuesday: The latest addition: a shape-matching game.

Each game follows the same proven formula, but the underlying infrastructure has had to evolve. Scaling from a single-use app to a multi-game platform that supports millions of plays has been a steep learning curve. The Teehans have had to rethink hosting, database caching, and load balancing—all while keeping the UI so simple that a first-time visitor knows exactly what to do in two seconds.

Why B2B Revenue Teams Should Pay Attention

This isn’t just a feel-good founder story. There are concrete takeaways for anyone in the B2B SaaS or tech space who’s thinking about user engagement, viral loops, or product-led growth.

1. Zero-Friction Onboarding Is Non-Negotiable

Dialed has no onboarding, no login, no instructions. Yet millions of people play it. The B2B lesson? Every step you add between a user and the core value of your product is a barrier. If you can strip your trial or demo down to a single click, you’ll see higher conversion rates.

2. Simple Inputs, High Replay Value

The controls for each game are intentionally limited: a few sliders, a single button. Yet players return again and again to beat their best scores. In a world where SaaS products often overwhelm users with feature dropdowns, there’s power in constraint.

3. Social Sharing as a Growth Engine

Players can share their scores on social platforms instantly. No community feature required. The game loses nothing by being web-based and shareable. For B2B products, think about how to make your product’s core output “shareable” without requiring a referral program.

4. Data Becomes a Competitive Moat

Every play feeds back into Dialed’s understanding of human perception. That’s a dataset that’s hard to replicate. B2B companies should ask themselves: what behavioral data is your product generating that competitors can’t easily acquire?

The “Vibe Coding” Trend Behind Dialed’s Success

Teehan’s approach—using AI coding assistants to build the game quickly without a formal development team—is part of a broader trend called “vibe coding.” It’s the practice of describing what you want to build in natural language to an AI, then iterating based on what comes out. Teehan used Cursor (an AI-powered code editor) and Claude (a large language model from Anthropic) to bring the game to life in a weekend.

This matters for B2B leaders because it democratizes software creation. If a former Meta VP can prototype a viral game in a hackathon with no dedicated engineering team, what could your product or marketing team build with the same tools? Rapid prototyping of user experiences, A/B tests, or even mini-apps for sales enablement is now within reach.

What’s Next for Dialed?

The Teehans aren’t slowing down. The shape-matching game is live, but the roadmap likely includes more sensory challenges—smell, touch, and even combined stimuli. The business model is still evolving, but the traffic numbers suggest there’s significant potential in advertising, premium subscriptions, or even licensing the technology to educational and corporate training platforms.

For the B2B crowd, the real opportunity might lie in applying Dialed’s testing framework to workplace training. Sales teams could test their recall of product details. Support agents could sharpen their ability to remember customer scenarios. Designers could fine-tune their color perception.

Final Takeaway: Perception Is a Muscle You Can Train

Geoff Teehan’s viral experiment has proven something profound: your sensory memory is probably worse than you think. But it also shows that perception is trainable. With repeated play, users get better. They learn to notice subtle differences in hue, pitch, and duration.

In a world where B2B buyers are bombarded with information, the companies that understand how human memory works—and design for it—will win. Whether that’s simplifying a demo, choosing the right palette for a dashboard, or building a product that people actually remember using, the lessons from Dialed are worth carrying into your next GTM strategy.

And if you’re feeling bold? Click the link. Try to match a cyan. See if you can beat your friends.

The data says you’ll miss. But at least you’ll learn something about yourself.