Slackronym

Slackronym

Slackronym

Ditching word docs for a built in acronym dictionary.

Overview

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.

Role

Product Designer

Project Type

Concept

Concept work

Tools

Figma

Origami

Timeline

48 hour sprint

Context

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

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

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

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.

My own personal experience feeling lost, confused and amassing a collection of sticky notes with business lingo made me think there has to be a better approach to communicating company language.

  • AMAR
    OOM
    APAW
    OACDD
    CNC
    WTF
    EDFF
    PEK
    LLM
    OVGM

    GJUU
    LAM

Problem

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

Organizations are using Word, Excel and PDFs to keep track of acronyms, but these methods 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).

During interviews, it was clear organizations don't want to add "another app" to their workflow just to make defining acronyms easier. However the alternative is using makeshift word banks. These word banks are often not synced to the cloud. This means their definitions are hard to update, likely out of date, or copies with alternative definitions exist in the company, resulting in a disjointed language glossary.

Image

Example of internal acronym documentation.

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

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

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

What if we…

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

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

Introducing

Slackronyms

Slackronyms

Slackronyms

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

1

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.

Spotlighting acronyms the same way slack does with @mentions.

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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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"

Putting fun into functional?

WST

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!

Stop slack-ing and check out my other work!

The Design Archive →

The Design Archive →

© 2024 Clayton Harding

Don't SLACK on the job. I think I'm funny.