Make Work Life Simpler, More Pleasant and More Productive.
By: Frankie Kastenbaum
Tags: UI Design, Slack, Messaging, UX Design, Redesign

I have been using Slack now for several years and will say it has helped communication, specifically by making it faster. Rather than taking the time to write a formal email, I can just send a quick text-like message. Not only is this faster, but it also removes the unnecessarily long email chains, where more often than not some information gets lost.

Although the positives could continue, and trust me I could continue that list, there are unfortunately also aspects of the Slack mobile and desktop app that unnecessarily cause frustrations from a user's standpoint. One day I hope to write an article raving about the surprise I got from using an app that works seamlessly. However, today sadly is not that day.

I am sure many of you have experienced the Slack app either on mobile or desktop. But for those of you who have not, Slack is a collaboration hub that brings people, information and tools together to get work done.

So here becomes the problem. I am part of more than 10 Slack Workspaces at the current moment— anyone else part of 10 or more?

Red rectangle highlights workspaces

Anyway, being part of 10 workspaces it becomes difficult to know which messages belong to which workspace, specifically when on the mobile app. I’m part of workspaces for networking and communities for my career and don’t know the names of all the members. So if an individual sends a message I won’t be able to connect them to the correct grouping.

This is because currently when Slack sends a notification to my phone informing me there was activity in a group, it only shows the name of the channel, not the workspace. Therefore, I am left having to click on the notification to have the app open, have the channel load and then scroll to the right to see the list of workspaces I am a part of. But wait, I’m not done solving this question yet! Now, because I have more workspaces than that fit on one screen, I have to scroll until I find the icon with a grey line to the left of it. Now my question can be answered and I can tell how I’m connected to this person or why I am receiving this message.

Notification design

Now let’s think about this. This involved three steps and some loading time. What if the notification listed the name of the workspace that this message was from as well? Or even the icon from that group? I’d love to get this information directly in a new iteration of this design.

What about us users who use both the desktop and mobile versions? More often than not I will use Slack on my desktop, whether it is to read or send a message, or even check into a channel. Therefore, I am most likely to respond to a notification on the desktop version first. This all sounds fine except… here's the kicker. If I open a notification for a direct message on desktop, the notification will remain on mobile until I also check it on that platform too. Since I am logged into the same workspaces on both platforms, I would have assumed the data would sync. In other words, once I have opened a message on the desktop version I expected it to also say it was read on mobile.

For me and I’m sure many other users this causes tension or frustration because it forces you to believe you have missed information or a message. As with my previous example, I feel this could be an easy fix. Can’t the backend learn that this notification has been handled on another platform? I am only a UX/UI Designer and not an Engineer, so correct me if I am wrong.

As with my other reviews, I am discussing apps that I use and believe are helpful. My aim is only to point out a few tweaks that could be made to better increase the user experience. What are your thoughts?