Slack "Slackronyms"

Ditching sticky notes for a
built in acronym dictionary.

Slackronyms is an imagined feature for Slack that helps when breaking down company jargon as they naturally appear in Slack messages. These passive descriptions aim to reduce the learning curve when onboarding and breaking down team silo language.

I was inspired to use my favorite work tool, Slack, to display timely definitions that feel natural on the platform.

Competencies

Component Creation

Prototyping

Motion Design

Tools

Figma

Jitter

Learning the company language is a struggle, even for well-versed employees.

VPN's do more than help you
watch European Netflix.

Learning the company language is a struggle, even for well-versed employees.

Wait, what does this acronym mean again?

The longer acronyms get used in the workplace the less often you see it spelled out. This disrupts productivity if you're constantly hunting down what these terms mean.

AMAR OOM APAW OACDD CNC WTF EDFF PEK LLM GJUU LAM

Problem

Organizations are using Word, Excel and Github to keep track
of acronyms, but they create too much friction for daily use.

McAfee users are confused about what their VPN tool does,
and don't know when to enable it on their device(s).

I interviewed colleagues to reflect on their previous work locations and their approach to this problem. I consistently heard that organizations didn't want to build a dedicated internal tool or add "another app" to their workflow just to make defining acronyms easier. The common alternative was building makeshift word banks that felt clunky to use.

Image

McAfee's Current VPN design

The longer these bandaid solutions are in place the worse it gets

Hard to access

Locating definitions is tedious. You either scroll through long pages or using a keyword search (Ctrl+F). To store these documents you take up space on your desktop or bookmark bar, it's no better than pulling a dictionary from a shelf.

Lack of ownership

Since these documents aren't officially being managed by the company, there is a lack of process and nobody bears responsibility for maintaining them.

Difficult to scale

As the organization grows so does the language, there's more opportunities to miss adding new words and keeping old unused ones, leaving new employees confused.

Opportunity

With 200k+ organizations already using Slack,
what if we make a new feature for enterprise plans?

HMW better communicate what a VPN does and how it protects their privacy in different scenarios?

With this approach, organizations don't need to adopt to a new tool and Slack gets a unique competitive feature.

Introducing

Slackronyms

A built in dictionary hosted on Slack. Whenever you see org-specific language you simply hover to get a definition of the acronym.

New message

Clayton

5:10 PM

Thanks for checking out this case study!

Btw

do you have those

TPS

reports ready?

Hover the highlighted words

Features

Spotlighting acronyms the same way slack does with @mentions.

@Clayton

TPS

Drawing attention without being too loud.

I wanted to ease users into this feature with recognizable visuals so people would already know they could interact with it the same way they would with an @mention.

Video

Hovering a "Slackronym"

When hovering over a "Slackronym", you can disable highlighting for specific unimportant words and view multiple definitions side by side for acronyms with more than one meaning.

This way, you decide when to take off the training wheels.

Image

Acronyms with more than 1 definition

Image

Acronyms with less than 1 definition

Manage outdated acronyms and approve new ones.

What makes Slack so appealing is how you can customize your workspace. Slackronyms should feel the same way. With system-admin roles, you can approve new acronyms and enable/disable them across the org.

Video

Hovering a "Slackronym"

Personal reflection

Putting fun into functional?

WST

This was a fun concept project to test how I would approach feature exploration and integrate it into an existing platforms ecosystem without feeling out of place.

Stop slack-ing and check out my other work!

The Design Archive →

Reading this was a test. You passed ツ

Ditching sticky notes for a built in acronym dictionary.

Learning the company language is a struggle, even for well-versed employees.

VPN's do more than help you watch European Netflix.

Learning the company language is a struggle, even for well-versed employees.

Wait, what does this acronym mean again?

The longer acronyms get used in the workplace the less often you see it spelled out. This disrupts productivity if you're constantly hunting down what these terms mean.

The longer acronyms get used in the workplace the less often you see it spelled out. This disrupts productivity if you're constantly hunting down what these terms mean.

The longer acronyms get used in the workplace the less often you see it spelled out. This disrupts productivity if you're constantly hunting down what these terms mean.

Organizations are using Word, Excel and Github to keep track of acronyms, but they create too much friction for daily use.

McAfee users are confused about what their VPN tool does, and don't know when to enable it on their device(s).

The longer these bandaid solutions are in place the worse it gets

Hard to access

Locating definitions is tedious. You either scroll through long pages or using a keyword search (Ctrl+F). To store these documents you take up space on your desktop or bookmark bar, it's no better than pulling a dictionary from a shelf.

Lack of ownership

Since these documents aren't officially being managed by the company, there is a lack of process and nobody bears responsibility for maintaining them.

Difficult to scale

As the organization grows so does the language, there's more opportunities to miss adding new words and keeping old unused ones, leaving new employees confused.

With 200k+ organizations already using Slack, what if we make a new feature for enterprise plans?

HMW better communicate what a VPN does and how it protects their privacy in different scenarios?

HMW better communicate what a VPN does and how it protects their privacy in different scenarios?

With this approach, organizations don't need to adopt to a new tool and Slack gets a unique competitive feature.

Introducing

Slackronyms

A built in dictionary hosted on Slack. Whenever you see org-specific language you simply hover to get a definition of the acronym.

New message

Hover the highlighted words

Spotlighting acronyms the same way slack does with @mentions.

Drawing attention without being too loud.

I wanted to ease users into this feature with recognizable visuals so people would already know they could interact with it the same way they would with an @mention.

When hovering over a "Slackronym", you can disable highlighting for specific unimportant words and view multiple definitions side by side for acronyms with more than one meaning.This way, you decide when to take off the training wheels.

Manage outdated acronyms and approve new ones.

What makes Slack so appealing is how you can customize your workspace. Slackronyms should feel the same way. With system-admin roles, you can approve new acronyms and enable/disable them across the org.

Putting fun into functional?

WST

This was a fun concept project to test how I would approach feature exploration and integrate it into an existing platforms ecosystem without feeling out of place.

This was a fun concept project to test how I would approach feature exploration and integrate it into an existing platforms ecosystem without feeling out of place.

This was a fun concept project to test how I would approach feature exploration and integrate it into an existing platforms ecosystem without feeling out of place.

Ditching sticky notes for a
built in acronym dictionary.

VPN's do more than help you
watch European Netflix.

Organizations are using Word, Excel and Github to keep track
of acronyms, but they create too much friction for daily use.

McAfee users are confused about what their VPN tool does,
and don't know when to enable it on their device(s).

With 200k+ organizations already using Slack,
what if we make a new feature for enterprise plans?

When hovering over a "Slackronym", you can disable highlighting for specific unimportant words and view multiple definitions side by side for acronyms with more than one meaning.

This way, you decide when to take off the training wheels.