A redesigned Slack, built for focus | Hacker News Reader

A redesigned Slack, built for focus

slack.com

30 pointstaubek63 comments

My company uses Slack. To me, all it is, is chat. And I barely use it. It's features are moving and changing so fast that every time I use it, things that I need for simple chat have moved. I'm fine with all the innovation and features, but please stop moving everything around in the user interface all the time. When most of your users are only using your software as a utility for their job, consistency should be considered a core feature.

Are we using the same Slack? The Slack that is extremely slow to add any new features, that still kind of looks the same as it did years ago? Compared to how much the various video conferencing tools change and update, Slack is a paragon of stability (to a fault, at times).

> please stop moving everything around in the user interface all the time

Yes! They change things for the sake of change and not for improvement.

(｡)! Are you a time traveler?

I cannot think of the differences since using it in 2019.

FWIW: https://slack.com/intl/en-gb/release-notes/mac

What kind of “moving around” are you referring to?

The biggest one seems to be the unsticking of threads to the sidebar, a few months ago it was changed where threads stick to the channel you open, if you move to another channel the sidebar is closed and a new context for that channel is now available. There's also a new pop-up window button for threads, you can split out the thread view into a new window.

It's a change I didn't enjoy so much, my workflow when replying to a request from another team was to leave a thread open and navigate around Slack to ask other teams while copying data from the original request for other teams to troubleshoot, now I need to pop the window out while navigating to other channels.

I miss tabs and split views, I have no idea why Slack hasn't implemented those, it'd help a lot to keep track of multiple channels at once (for example when managing incidents).

I guess they have a bunch of designers on staff trying to justify their existence.

I am seeing this increasingly. I don't know if it's a confirmation bias, or there's some kind of movement in the UX circles that's churning these things out.

I imagine it's similar to JS framework of the week, or testing tool of the montgh, or backend architecture of the season.

definitely not recent - i wish someone would map out the amount of padding in webapps in a chart, as well as the frequency of the phrases "simplify", "helps you focus", and "distraction-free" in announcements / update notes over the last 15 years.

Gotta hand it to them here, an app entirely built to distract you now declares itself as "Distraction free".

Link without broken images: https://slack.com/blog/productivity/a-redesigned-slack-built...

Still seeing broken images, the images link to an S3 access denied error

There's a popup on the bottom of the page that says "Hey friend <wave emoji> Got a minute to chat?"

Vomit.

It's just.. offensive. I don't even know the word for why. It's just disgusting.

It's assuming an inner-circle social relationship where not only none exists, but furthermore neither party likes the other — from your perspective. (I suspect the Slack team thinks they like you, even if you're of the opinion that they don't.)

It's the same as if the school principal who nobody really likes comes to you and says "Hey buddy, got a minute to chat?". Or a police officer (nuance differs per country here).

Murderous clippy vibes

Reminds me of the time when Slack introduced their WYSIWYG editor as the only option, and had to add a feature for users to opt-out of it after the backlash they received (https://mspoweruser.com/slack-rich-text-editor/). Props that they actually responded to feedback back then.

The problem with proprietary SaaS products like Slack is there's not much one can do about regression — you can't pin a version, add your own custom theme, disable bloat etc. — I like Slack, but we're stuck with whatever design language their team decides.

That thing still doesn't work right with inline code. It frequently decides that it has no idea how the cursor should interact with the closing tilde (`). Super frustrating.

And the only way to get multi-level lists is with their WYSIWYG editor. Can't do that manually.

The part I hate the most about Slack is that when you join a new Workspace, the default is to send you an email with notifications if you’re inactive more than 15 minutes. And to turn it off, you got to go into a kind of hidden configuration in the settings.

It’s anything but helping you focus.

That’s actually what’s helping me focus, because it means I can close slack and check email a couple times a day and get work done in between.

You could close slack and open it a couple of times a day. The email is an unnecessary intermediate step.

"We've hidden everything behind three clicks because our dribbble-raised designers can't find a way to justify their salaries"

I don't want pesky buttons cluttering my screen, I turn on my computer to stare at white-space.

Slack wanted to replace email, and now it looks like email client. What an irony.

It's an email client with @here to be extra annoying.

And worse threading.

It's the carcinization of chat clients, everything turns to email.

    Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.

 —-jwz

Design isn't just what it looks like. It's how it's used.

In that regard, this is a massive downgrade. Changing channels is now a three-click job. Wacky.

For a long time, getting to the Create Channel dialog was a single click ("+" button to the right of the "Channels" heading). It has been minimum two clicks (and a long hover or third click) for quite some time. Astonishingly, even this new UI overhaul appears to be making it so you must still click at least twice to open the "Create channel" dialog. I just don't get it. More "change for the sake of change" that literally no one asked for. The only change I want: change it back to how it looked/worked in 2014.

Good distraction-free usable Slack already exists as the wee-slack plugin for WeeChat:

https://github.com/wee-slack/wee-slack

https://www.futurile.net/2020/11/30/weechat-for-slack/

My company forced us all onto Slack and I'd hate being forced to use the official interface. My productivity would fall due to the woeful implementation of threads hiding information, and the pathetic control and filtering of notifications.

I have a script that edits slack's JS bundle to remove a class of notification that cannot be turned off, at least in the Linux version.

The only time Slack can help you focus is when you keep it close or completely muted.

We used to have chats, you know, same office. Phone. Email, things that were trackable.

Then Slack, with channels and DMs. Then came threads. Threads are horrible to track conversations.

And now more and more I see people using reactions to communicate important information.

What I like about email is that it's quite binary. Read or non-read.

In Slack there are so many different ways where a channel might have an unread part that isn't there at the bottom.

It's like the mint I planted when I was drinking too much, that think sprouted everywhere.

This is speculation, but I’ve noticed a trend toward Notion style “everything” services. They just added canvases and a couple of other features that are very much Notion inspired. Apps like Clickup are doing the same thing, inversely you have Notion adding project management.

To me (speculating) the Slack UI/IX is extremely restrictive in its current form if the goal is to broaden it’s offering. Moving toward a UX with different views and pages is probably a step in that direction.

Not sure if I like it but it does seems to be happening

There was a time in the past when "redesigns" like these were too subtle to be newsworthy. I've recently experienced a painful startup failure and the experience has forced my mind to focus on what matters: boring, stable technology delivered fast, solving the user's problems with no frills, bells or whistles. I'm now thinking of using Google Chat (right there, integrated into the GMail interface) for my next thing, rather than paying Slack.

This reminds me of Intellij’s new ui. Instead of investing in window and tab management, they changed icons. At the new UI is optional for now.

Slack has really taken a beating after being sold off

Looks lot similar like its competitor you know who

Teams, for anyone unfamiliar.

I’m surprised they’re taking this direction, given that no one I know of likes Teams.

Teams is terrible. If it wasn't Microsoft forcing it on everyone with forced upgrades and such it wouldn't have ever gone anywhere.

The single best selling point of Teams is that it's included in the O365 subscription every corporation has anyway so that they can get Powerpoint, Excel and Word

Teams is a lot like herpes: no one chose it, but everyone has it.

Because it’s bundled for free with tools people do want, like Excel and Outlook. I don’t know anyone that would choose Teams as a stand-alone product.

Do they really want those? I haven't used either in a very long time.

I'm not aware of a report that shows "popularity of Excel", but I can give some points.

* I pay for my own Excel license because it's so useful for me in a variety of contexts. My wife does all our family accounts using it. * Globally, Microsoft estimate 1 billion monthly active Excel users, and said at a conference last year that some admin staff spend approximately 30% of the week using Excel. * Training for Excel is a top selling course on Udemy. * Working in Enterprise, there were a lot of people (BAs, Finance, PMs) who said they would quit if IT didn't provide Excel.

So I'd say "yes, there's a lot of people who want Excel".

I'm sure there is less enthusiasm for Outlook, but amongst people who live in calendars and email, it seems to be pretty popular.

Teams is pretty useless as a standalone product anyway.

We’re slowly moving to Teams. It’s good for sharing documents and calendars. It’s horrible for chat and meetings.

Take this as a lesson for (one of) the reason CLI tools are preferred where possible, there's no temptation for unnecessary UX busy work. A tool designed for everyone is a tool designed for no-one.

What new things does Slack do, beside slowness? IRC and messaging apps like Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, AIM were invented decades ago.

IRC is not even remotely comparable. It doesn't save messages, you can't upload media, you can't delete or edit messages, you can't do most things that slack does. Why would you even bring that up.

I'd say for 90% of what I do on Slack IRC is very comparable. It has channels so you can organize your chats around certain topics or ad-hoc create one to discuss between only a handful of people. It also has one-to-one chats. Sure, it doesn't have media sharing (unless you count the quite terrible file-sending feature) but it's not terribly often I need to send files over Slack which aren't already stored in some shared storage so I can simply send a link (which also means that access to documents is managed in a single place, generally a good thing). And as for delete/edit, I hardly ever do this. Most of the time people fully well understand me if I mistype something, and there's always the trusty asterisk correction which is faster to type anyways. And one thing IRC does which Slack doesn't is show me who's in the room, which at least gives an indication as to who might have seen my message.

Does Slack add more features? Sure, and some of them are pretty great. But is it a revolution over IRC to the point that you sully your mouth by uttering them in the same sentence? Not at all. At the end of the day they are both room-oriented text based communication channels.

You can see people on Slack channels too, and their presence status if enabled. That said, I wouldn't count on that, as I leave one client always open and in non-away state just to seem that I care about my work.

That said, most horrible part about Slack is how more and more closed it is becoming; when there was XMPP bridge you could at least use some non-shitty client (hello, Electron) to interact with it.

"I'd say for 90% of what I do" and there immediately the point is invalid. What you do is not what everyone does.

I would argue that everything you listed is a bug, not a feature.

- Having media in chats is obnoxious; links can be passed along in IRC too (and data, although DCC sucks).

- Editing/Deletion of messages actually makes the threads later on harder to understand as someone may have commented on the original message.

Can you mute coworkers yet? Asking for a friend

I wonder how many people would like a block button.

I work at a large company with thousands of people on Slack. It is effectively unmoderated social media.

And if anyone thinks that HR are the moderators, well the buck stops with them but no HR team has the time, resources, or training to moderate a Slack workspace(s) in that way.

Imagine how many bugs they could have fixed with this budget.

did they remove the "huddle" feature yet?

That thing never works and some marketing colleagues keep trying to use it.

> built for focus

Slack ≠ Focus

This entire discussion is nothing but content-free complaining. I’m impressed with Slack’s ability to enrage and annoy so many people.

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