A chat-first project tool with an AI assistant that prioritises what needs your attention.

A chat-first project tool that collapses conversation and tasks into one surface, with an AI assistant that surfaces what needs your attention before you ask.

Cinematic sky with a paper plane over a valley

Role: Sole Product Designer
Contribution: Owned flows, interaction model, and visual system across 40+ screens — onboarding to shipped UI.
Timeline: Feb 2024 – Apr 2024
Client: Mellow

The problem

Teams live in a chat app and a task tracker at once, and context leaks through the seam — links pasted back and forth, decisions buried in a DM.

The brief: one surface, with neither half feeling bolted on.

Three principles

One surface, shared primitives. Any message can become a task; any task keeps the thread that made it.
AI as triage, not a chatbot. It surfaces the few things that need you and stays quiet otherwise.
Calm by default. Light surface, one accent, so real signal reads as signal.

Getting in

One decision per screen — sign in, verify, set up a profile — with a live preview alongside so the payoff shows before you commit. Org setup seeds defaults; the last step invites the team with roles.

Check your inbox — six-box email verification code entry with a resend link

Set up your organization — name, size, role, and work type with a step progress bar

Invite people — add by email or link, each with a Member or Admin role

The Attention Hub

Home opens on what the assistant judged worth your attention, plus your mentions — not an unread-count firehose. My Tasks filters the same data down to just you, grouped by status.

Home Attention Hub — Important tab of assistant-curated activity

Home Attention Hub, Mentions tab — messages where you were @-mentioned

Home My Tasks — assigned work grouped by status with priority and due dates

Mellow AI

One tap away, starting from prompts drawn from your actual work — pending tasks, deadlines, unresolved threads. Answers are grounded in your data, and every chat stays in Recents.

Ask Mellow AI — assistant panel with context-aware suggested prompts

Mellow AI answering a question about pending tasks and deadlines

Mellow AI with the Recents list of past conversations open

Workspaces & Topics

A workspace is a team's space; inside it, conversation is organised into Topics, each with Discussions and Tasks side by side. Creating one is a single modal — no wizard.

Workspace Topics list — active topics with last message and mention counts

Create Workspace modal — space name, description, and add-people search

Manage People modal — searchable member list with per-person remove controls

Discussions

Full messaging — mentions, quoted replies, reactions, attachments. Because a topic is a container, a message here becomes a task, and a long thread condenses into an AI summary.

Topic discussion thread — mentions, a quoted reply, PDF attachments, and the composer

A discussion thread with the emoji picker open over a message with reactions

A discussion thread with a Summarise action and a per-message Resolve control

Tasks

Tasks live in the topic that spawned them, as a List or a Kanban board, with one shared control row so switching views never means relearning.

Task list grouped by status, with assignee, priority, due date, and topic

The same task list re-grouped by assignee, with a Show Completed toggle

Kanban board — To do, In Progress, and Completed columns with task cards

Kanban board mid-drag — a card lifted between columns with a drop placeholder

Direct messages

DMs reuse the topic primitives — a message can still become a task. Links unfurl, files render inline, and the empty state names who you're about to talk to.

Direct message inbox — conversations with delivery ticks beside an open thread

An empty direct-message thread that names the person you're about to message

Direct message with an inline PDF and image attachment preview

A direct-message thread with a quoted reply, an unfurled Figma link, and a reaction

What held it together

Chat and tasks are one thing only if the shared pieces are genuinely shared: one card anatomy, one control row, one way a message turns into work. Solo across 40+ screens, that system was the guardrail.