SlashReviews
Creating a better slack-integrated deliverable review process
The Problem
The Digital Corps implements a review system built into Slack called SlashReviews, allowing team members to submit reviews to the appropriate manager and receive feedback within the specific project channel. With over 30 concurrent projects, reviews can quickly build up and become overwhelming for both reviewers and reviewees. Many reviews would get stuck in the process for months, delaying projects and minimizing project scope due to time restraints. This project aimed to make the SlashReview process more tailored to the needs of project managers, team leads, and directors as they move projects through completion.
ROLE
UX Designer/Reseacher
Ball State University Digital Corps (internal project)
CLIENT
DURATION
2 months
DELIVERABLES
UX Design, Visual Design, System Design
Keeping up with reviews was a daunting task
I started the process by talking with project managers, team leads, and team members to understand why the current system wasn’t working for them. I conducted two focus groups and three individual interviews with various roles to understand what problems they faced when submitting or conducting reviews.
The insights gathered from this research fell into three main buckets:
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Reviewers quickly became overwhelmed with reviews
No location to see all submitted reviews
No prioritization with submitted reviews (expedited reviews or regular reviews)
Reviews would get lost or buried in a list of other reviews and feedback
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Contributors had difficulty keeping track of submitted reviews
Submitted reviews would get lost in other feedback or other channel messages
No location to see all pending reviews at once
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SlashReview notifications drowned out other important channel or project notifications
Review submissions would give the submitter and reviewer two separate notifications, one in the channel and one in the SlashReviews app
Lots of repetition in the current system
To better understand how to fix the issues that team members presented, I had to first grasp how the SlashReviews system worked behind the scenes. I began by sitting with the team lead who created SlashReviews to understand what data is stored, how the system works, and what possibilities for change existed.
Original SlashReviews workflow
Issues identified
How might we make SlashReviews better?
By defining how the current system worked, it was much easier to pinpoint the exact pieces of the system where team members were having issues. We guided our problem-solving through the following How Might We questions:
How might we decrease the number of notifications received by reviewers and review submitters while still ensuring reviews don’t get lost among other messages?
How might we help speed up the review process so reviews don’t get behind schedule?
How might we present reviews in a way that doesn’t overwhelm submitters or reviewers?
Optimizing SlashReviews for user needs
Once we had questions to guide our work, we were able to decide what pieces of the SlashReviews system we were going to change. We focused our efforts on two main issues: eliminating duplicate notifications for team members and reviewers and providing a homepage for the SlashReviews app in Slack that would provide essential review information in one location.
Updated SlashReviews workflow
A central hub for all SlashReviews
Slack has a strict design system when it comes to creating apps, so I utilized a Slack block UI kit in Figma to help build out my idea for the homepage interface. The final design for the SlashReviews homepage included a button to start a review for any project, along with lists of the user’s most recent reviews submitted to them for review along with reviews they’ve submitted.
Figma design of SlashReviews homepage
Since the SlashReviews system was built specifically for the Digital Corps, we decided the best way to gain user feedback was to implement the system and gain feedback as issues or usability problems arose. While typically on a project we would conduct usability testing and iterate on feedback, we hit crunch time and wanted to get a new solution out as soon as possible.
Feedback after implementation
The final product
After a few tweaks by the design team lead/SlashReview developer, the new SlashReviews homepage and notification system were up and running. Initial feedback from implementation found that reviewers and review submitters were pleased with the reduction of notifications and were happy to have a location to see all of their reviews at once. Overall, reviews seemed to be moving through the process faster and projects seemed to stay on time a little easier.
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