From an office-politics game to a dental rehearsal companion, Vancouver builders explored what happens when conversation becomes the interface.
How do you talk your way to a promotion in an office full of personalities? What if you could rehearse a dentist appointment before walking through the door? Or ask for a recipe substitution while your hands are busy cooking?
Those questions became projects at Alebex’s first Vancouver hackathon meetup on October 7, 2026. Teams and solo builders came together at AIC Founders Lab for a 2.5-hour building sprint, producing 11 community submissions. Alebex provided the real-time voice infrastructure and APIs that builders used to create their conversational experiences.
Industry professionals participated alongside eight high-school students from Alexander Academy, working in two groups of four. The submissions ranged from games and cooking companions to accessibility, education and healthcare concepts. Each started with a specific situation where speaking could be useful.
The result was a set of prototypes that made voice AI easy to picture in everyday life. Here are the projects and the design choices worth looking at more closely.
The winning game puts conversation to work
Congratulations to Charlene, whose hackathon project Don’t Die In Office won the event. The game puts new graduates in an office with six characters and a familiar ambition: get promoted without being undone by office politics.
Players use voice to talk with characters whose personalities include an overconfident manager, an honest mentor and a gossip. The office becomes a place to work out who to listen to and how to respond. It is a playful take on the social learning that comes with a first job.
Here, conversation is part of the game mechanics. The player’s reason to speak comes from the situation and the characters. That is a useful starting point for a voice experience: give the conversation a purpose someone can understand immediately. Charlene’s office setting does that before a player has even started talking.
Practising conversations that matter
The Brightside prototype, by Jordan Molina and Habibi, lets people explore a dental visit through voice rehearsal. Its concept includes speaking with reception, a hygienist and a dentist, with pacing and breathing controls. The interaction begins before the appointment, when someone may want to know what to expect and practise at their own pace.
The An prototype, by Linh Hoang, addresses a different communication barrier: two-way spoken interpretation between English and another language for patients and medical professionals. Brian’s Empethic listener trainer prototype uses social role-play to practise empathy, putting listening and responding at the centre of the exercise.
These projects ask voice AI to help with the conversation itself. Brightside gives a person a setting to rehearse; An focuses on understanding across languages; the listener trainer focuses on responding to another person. They remain early prototypes. In particular, healthcare-related concepts need careful validation before anyone relies on them in real care.
Everyday tasks with a reason to speak
The hackathon project Sous – your personal cook mate, by ChickenDream, brings voice into the kitchen. It offers hands-free recipe guidance, including substitutions, measurements and timing. The practical appeal is clear: someone preparing food can ask a question without stopping to type.
The Daylight Calendar AI prototype, by DAGOAT, turns attention to ideas, reminders and calendar items, including assignment reminders. Its starting point is the fleeting thought someone wants to capture before returning to what they were doing.
The prototype Samantha — The Voice That Remembers, submitted by Project Samantha and described as a solo build by Michael Yamashita, explores a longer relationship with a voice companion. It uses saved conversation summaries as context for later calls, allowing the next interaction to draw on what came before.
The three projects put different demands on the experience. Sous needs to fit the rhythm of a task already underway. Daylight needs to preserve something the user wants to act on later. Samantha makes memory part of the design, bringing questions of relevance, privacy and user control into the conversation. Choosing what to remember is as important as choosing what to say.
Accessibility, education and business
The prototype Sidekick — Your voice, connected to the world, submitted by Sidekick · Solo, combines voice-first local discovery, camera interpretation and supervised browser shopping for blind and low-vision people. The concept starts with a person saying what they need, then works toward finding information or navigating a service. The prototype keeps browser tasks supervised; testing with blind and low-vision users is an important next step.
The BC University Pathway prototype, by Andrew, Austin, Nathan and Mateus, helps high-school students explore postsecondary paths. The conversation begins with a student trying to make sense of their options, giving the project a specific audience and a meaningful decision to support.
The hackathon project eCommerce shop keeper, by chillguy, proposes a one-click voice shopkeeper for online stores. A shopper could begin with a spoken question instead of having to translate their need into filters or search terms.
The prototype AI business Assessment interviewer, by Time To Revenue, interviews business owners and entrepreneurs about their pain points to inform AI recommendations. The useful work starts with understanding the business problem before recommending a tool.
These four projects share a design challenge: connecting a person’s own words to an appropriate next step. That step might be more information, a clearer set of options or a supervised action. Getting it right requires knowing where the system should ask, explain or wait for confirmation.
What these projects taught us
The strongest ideas gave people a reason to speak. In Charlene’s game, it is a character to engage with. In Brightside, it is an appointment to rehearse. In Sous, it is a cooking question that arrives while your hands are busy.
They also show why a shared voice foundation can lead to very different products. Alebex supplied infrastructure; the builders chose the setting, the user and the purpose of the conversation. Those choices shaped each prototype more than a broad label such as “voice assistant” could.
A useful next test is whether the interaction works for its intended users. Sidekick needs accessibility feedback and clear supervision. An needs careful language and clinical validation. Samantha needs understandable memory controls. A short sprint can make an idea concrete; testing is how builders learn what deserves to become a product.
Thank you to the builders and what comes next
Thank you to everyone who joined, built and shared a project. Bringing an unfinished idea into a room, working through it and showing what you made is what gives a hackathon its value. Congratulations again to Charlene, and to every participant who contributed one of these 11 directions for voice AI.
We are planning a larger hackathon near the end of October 2026. Follow Alebex’s official social channels for announcements in the coming days.
Have a conversation you want to turn into a product? Start with a specific person and a situation where speaking would help. Visit the Alebex developer platform to sign in or create an account and explore building your own voice AI experience.