Case 14 / 17
Atomic8
A product with two homes: the browser and the chat window.
- Sector
- SaaS · Team Management
- Year
- 2022
- Scope
- Brand · Slack App · Web App
A manager on a remote team spends the day in Slack and the week in six other tools. Follow-ups sit in threads. Decisions sit in someone's memory. One-on-one notes sit in a doc nobody opens twice. Atomic8 set out to put that whole job in one place, without asking anyone to leave the window they already work in.
The tool you leave to use another tool
Every tool in this category asks a manager to go somewhere else. That is why so few of them stick. The work happens in the chat window. Anything outside it becomes a thing you mean to update later.
So Atomic8 had to be two things at once: a full product, and a Slack app that behaves like one.
Design the small surface first
The Slack side was designed first. The web app was then drawn to match it.
A Slack message has a few lines and no navigation. That forces every step down to the one thing a manager needs right then. A dashboard will happily hold ten features nobody asked for.
One rule came out of it. If a task could not be finished inside a thread, it was not finished in the web app either.
Gev blends deep empathy for the customer with a practical focus, so we can move quickly and deliver. A true partner and a pleasure to work with. Highly recommended!
Tim Ryan, Co-Founder & CEO, Atomic8One system, two windows
Atomic8 shipped as one system with two front doors. The web app is where managers plan. The Slack app is where their teams answer. Nobody has to decide which one to open. That was the point.
