Slack Focus Rooms

An AI-driven tool that delivers well-being and efficiency support, enabling users to reduce stress and boost concentration without interruptions.

Top 6 finalist, 4 designers, 2 days desgning

Salesforce AI A11y Team Hackathon
New York City ID# 0924-1024
Feature Prototype 1 week
Slack Feature Designer • Top 6 Finalists
Figma
Prototype
Presentation
Demo Video

Here, let me catch you up!

Once upon an async week, rose a delightful opportunity for designers to create something new, a competition to level the field for neurodivergent employees.

Many of those employees can often struggle with focus, emotional regulation, and managing work stress, especially with the constant stream of notifications and tasks.

(*srzrrrrr* cue record scratch)

Before I get into that, a bit on the hackathon itself.

Info / Challenge

This hackathon is hosted by Salesforce’s Abilityforce in collaboration with Office of Product Acccessibility, which includes EVP / SVP panel judges from departments: Product Design, Product Accessibility & Inclusive Design, Accounting, Ethical & Humane Use, and Software Engineering.

From ideation to product demo, the journey lasted one week with 2 rounds of judging. And believe it or not, the hardest part was actually sizing the brainstorm to one clear objective.

Participants were essentially given this:

“Align with the theme and focus on solving an accessibility challenge—this can include digital or physical accessibility, policy changes, or any other relevant area.”

And that was it. Not much there to help narrow down on what the hackathon hosts were looking forward to, but it wasn’t nothing. After more or less 4 hours of debate (small conversations and friendly bickering are unimportant), the final decision came down to what is known as, Slack Focus Rooms.

This feature is an “AI-powered solution integrated directly into our main communication platform—Slack—that offers emotional and productivity support, helping them manage stress and improve focus without the need for additional apps or distractions.”

Evaluations

There are 3 key points that Slack Focus Rooms drives attention to:

① Accessibility: Enhances accessibility for employees with ADHD by integrating emotional and focus management tools into Slack, reducing barriers to their success.

② Innovation: Transforms Slack into a holistic well-being platform, combining AI-driven emotional check-ins, task prioritization, and productivity management to address ADHD-specific challenges.

③ AI Integration: Seamlessly integrate AI for real-time emotional and productivity support, using NLP to prioritize tasks, suggest breaks, and break down complex tasks, improving focus and well-being.

Not only does Slack Focus Rooms answer the question, “Is this feature accessible?”, it also encourages the themes: empathy, inclusivity, and value:

Is there design empathy between the feature and target audience?
Can this feature have real impact? Success with small and large communities?
Does this feature address the barriers to accessibility with/and beyond the target persona?

Now that you get the gist of things, relax back in you seat, and let me take you through Slack Focus Rooms.

Slack Focus Rooms

This is Mia. A 30-year-old Marketing Coordinator, who is the creative powerhouse of her team, known for her ability to come up with bold, out-of-the-box ideas.

Not only so, it’s her energy in those brainstorming session that help lead teams into innovative thinking. That, is where Mia’s strength shines brightest.

But...

Mia’s ADHD makes it hard for her to stay organized and focused on detailed-heavy tasks. This leaves her attention scattered and she missing multiple deadlines. Not only that, managing projects accoss multiple time zones adds to her stress. Mia’s also tried traditional time management tools but sadly none seem to be the right fit.

Let’s jump into a typical day in life of Mia...

“It’s Monday morning, and Mia feels overwhelmed with a busy schedule.”

“This includes finalizing a social media campaign and attending a contents team meeting.”

“Needing a solution that fits her working style, Mia is introduced to the Focus Rooms in Slack, a tool that balances creativity and structure, which is easily accessible from the left navigation.”

“The Focus Room bot promptly asks if she’s working on anything specific.”

“Mia tells the bot she wants to focus on a specific task, so it suggests tasks from her lists and upcoming projects. She then chooses the social media campaign that is due in just a couple of days.”

“The Focus Room bot offers Mia the option to focus solely on her social media campaign tasks.”

“Mia then waits a few moments as the bot readys her Focus Room.”

Inside Focus Rooms

“Now that Mia’s Room is ready. It only displays relevant campaign lists and files that can help her navigate through the project.”

“With features like text-to-speech, Mia can review lengthy documents without losing focus.”

“After 30 minutes of focused work, Mia recieves a reminder to take a break following the Pomodoro technique.”

“She’s engages in a one minutes breathing exercise with visual aid.”

“After a quick break, Mia jumps back in to her campaign. Here, Mia struggles with the proposal, so the bot ‘Ellie’ suggests reviewing data from a previous marketing campaign, and integrating it with her current one.

Ellie summarizes the previous campaign data and offers suggestions for the next steps in creating a new one.”

“After gathering data, creating a new campaign, and forming a precise strategy, she checks off the task completed, and is ready to exit the Focus Room. Well done Mia! For the first time, Mia feels her ADHD is working not against, but for her.”

“With the Focus Room, Mia has found the ideal balance of creativity and structure, empowering not only her, but her whole team to thrive.

In addition that, her whole team loves that the new Mia is meeting deadlines consistently, and the quality of work being better than ever.”

...and scene!

How was it? Did you like the idea of have a personalized focus area right within your workspace? What about Mia’s struggle and success with it?

I certainly did!

For me this was one of the top three, most enjoyable hackathons I’ve ever participated in. And although Slack Focus Rooms wasn’t chosen as the project for next steps, I’m still honored as a Top 6 Finalist to have made it that far with just 1.5 days of designing components, scenes, and prototypes.

Postitive Sentiments

“Amazing work 🎉 You all did a fantastic job in presenting on the finalists presentation today. It was great to see such a polished and well thought out use case. I loved how one of the judges really latched onto the “Huddle with yourself” messaging of the benefits of the Focus Room. Regardless of the final outcome you should all be super proud of the work that you did together to generate a great idea that will help neurodivergent employees. Thanks for being such great Accessibility Allys!”

- Tim, Senior Director of Demo Studio

A big thanks to...

...panel judges, and my amazing fellow designers. Would not have done it without them fr fr (aka honestly).

End of Project Preview

Oh dang, you’ve hit the end of the Slack Focus Rooms!

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