The Hive
A collaboration involved around An AI-powered app extension that enables skill swapping within Slack
Overview
Skill Swapping is the idea of exchanging skills with other collaborators in a collaborative ecosystem.
In a post-covid world where online workspaces have came to the forefront, there has been an increased demand for collaboration-based software; and with the popularization of AI-powered programs, there is now even more possibilities for those software to be further enhanced with Ai-powered insights and tools. The problem comes in when you have workers seemingly needing to navigate across several different apps throughout the day just to communicate; prolonging the process when it would be much easier if you could stay contained to 1 platform.
Research
In preparation for the creation process, the group split our efforts towards researching various areas of the market pertaining specifically to collaborate online workspaces. Looking across the market size showed us that there was both lots of room and an increased demand for collaborative tools; specifically ones with more niche use cases given the general dominance of platforms such as zoom, google and Microsoft. The size of the Collaboration Software market was valued at 16.1 Billion USD in 2022, wih 40% of all market shares coming from the USA. The trends we found most prominent within the collaborative workspace market were AI tools, used for user specific insights and productivity based enhancements, and an increased usage of immersive spaces taking place in VR/AR, allowing users to be placed in a scenario or area without needing to be physically in location.
With this information in mind, we conducted a group Topic researching session in order to expose ourselves to a diverse range of information, providing us with a fresh set of ideas and re-occurring patterns to help inform us in our design exploration. After doing a thorough This is what led us in the direction of Skill Swapping.
Key Problems
In order to focus on the scope of what our solution would cover, we chose 3 main problems to solve, those being:
Silos and Limited Collaboration
- Many teams operate in silos, hindering the free flow of collaboration
- Lack of communication and knowledge exchange among team members
Underutilized Skills
- Team members may possess skills beyond their current roles, leading to untapped potential.
- Limited visibility into the full skill set of each team member results in missed opportunities
Innovation Stagnation
- Lack of diversity in thought processes may impede innovation and creative solutions.
Further research on the topic uncovered that individuals in the workplace have started to feel isolated from each other as a result of remote work being more prevalent than it used to be, so recognizing the reasons behind why others might be hesitant to ask for assistance was crucial in informing design decisions to make the process of asking for help a more accessible, comfortable process.
Ideation and Testing
After some further group brainstorming on ideas and potential platforms, we settled on creating an extension for a pre existing software; in this case being Slack. The concept of this extension involves allowing users to share their individual skills amongst each other. It aims to make seeking assistance in areas that a person may not have the most strength in easier by requesting help from other co-workers who may have more expertise, in exchange for helping them out in a skill they feel more comfortable in. This fosters an environment where equal opportunity is being given to each collaborator.
The idea is based around a system where you start with a set amount of “honey”; you can use honey to request a specific skill you need someone to assist you with, and in return for helping you with the task, the person earns honey to use themselves. It creates initiative to not only ask others for help, but to collaborate with others; benefiting both sides instead of coming off like a one-sided interaction.
Testing Methods and Results
For our main testing, the group had 1 participant participate in a one – on – one think aloud session, where the participant is asked to perform specific tasks on the prototype while speaking through their process navigating the program, saying what they think they should do and any points of confusion they come across. The remainder of the participants did silent testing, where instead of speaking out loud they were asked to place notes on the parts of the prototype they felt were confusing or think needed further clarification. 2 of the group members were responsible for administering and giving instructions for the testing itself while the other 2 members wrote down notes and observations based on feedback from the participants.
The testing session revealed a few main issues with our prototype, mainly uncertainty over how the honey is collect, how to seek assistance from others and providing help to other users. From this we concluded we needed to have much more concise instruction and more intuitive features within the plugin so that users aren’t lost or intimidated by a lack of guidance or direction.
Final Product
Taking the feedback from the testing sessions in mind, we eventually landed with our final design. A much more thorough onboarding section was added that goes into detail about how much honey you start with, how to initiate a task and covering how much honey is needed depending on the difficulty of said task. Requests are made through the use of a command, where you can either write a request yourself or draft a request using AI. Upon sending a request, AI will match up users based on their level of expertise based on the skill being requested; after which a user can choose to accept the task and complete it to recieve honey.
Photos
Nicholas Baluta 
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