On the other hand, I go and check Slack every now and then, clear out all my unreads, and then go back to work. If part of that process is typing '4' into one of those windows then it's basically zero-friction from my perspective.

In other words, as long as getting a Slack message doesn't already interrupt, distract, and annoy people, neither will this, and if it does then you can tune your Slack notification settings to handle that. Turn off push notifications for the bot and you'll only see/answer the question when you go into the app to clear out unreads.

These interactions typically take between five and fifteen seconds to complete, and then you're back to whatever you were doing before. We have tuned when and how Ava reaches out to minimize annoyance, and to keep productivity high. We also let employees respond at their own convenience, so it's not like you have to immediately give Ava your attention.

Here's an example: http://i.imgur.com/M5cyOvZ.png