Did you know Tamar Yehoshua, Slacks Chief Product Officer, is speaking atTNW2020this year?
Check out their session on Human-centricity: building products with customershere.
Back in March, Slack launcheda significant update to Slacks design.
It wasnt just one change, but a constellation of themsome shiny new things (channel sections!
), some old things in new places, and a general spring cleaning of information architecture.
These changes addressed a basic challenge that had grown naturally with Slack: with size comes complexity.
This punch in of problem is hard to quantify and measure.
Instead, we took it to people in the real world.
In the beginning, we put aside our previous ideas about what was essential in Slack.
This meant stripping away as much of the interface as possible, and reorganizing it piece by piece.
This reductive approach led us to some very intriguing but untested prototypes.
So we turned to customers for a gut check.
To make Slack simpler for everyone, we needed to hear from a broader group.
so that collect feedback, we worked with customers the best way we knew how: through ashared channel.
The pilot channel provided a way for us to hear unfiltered input quickly.
We figured it was extra noise that you didnt need all the time.
At first, we added a big, top-level button.
However, we underestimated how much people actually wanted the capability.
Our horizontal hierarchy often left us struggling with the right placement for search.
For the past year or so, weve had two different search inputs that do essentially the same thing.
It wasnt our favorite.
Our first prototype was controversial, and there was strong feedback from both sides.
We learned from them, and they were able to build off each other.
In our first test, the results were mixed.
While the new design beat the old one in a few categories, new insights popped up.
But our participants completely ignored it.
So we zapped it to the top of the sidebar, where people intuitively found and understood it.
To keep things minimal, we started with the view collapsed.
So we decided to start with them open for everyone.
After we worked through dozens of hiccups, our second test beat or tied the existing design.
We refined our new top bar to feel a little more at home on Windows and Mac desktops.
Our various jump-to buttons now match one another.
At Slack, we take design changes seriously.
People choose to use Slack and we dont take that for granted.
Worse even, the adjustments can feel useless: change for changes sake.
This article was originally published onSlacks blogby the Slack team.
you might read ithere.
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