Slack just launched a redesign, but don't freak out
The nature of work is changing every day as the coronavirus pandemic rumbles on. Offices are shutting their doors temporarily, and white-collar professionals are moving their work online in response. Slack’s 12 million daily users will also be seeing some new changes in the next few weeks.
On Wednesday, the work chat app unveiled a redesign for its interface — the app’s biggest since its launch in 2013, according to the company’s director of product management Jaime DeLanghe.
With the new design comes a "people" page, a “compose” button, and a lightning-looking “shortcut” button for accessing and using conversation tools — polls, reminders, calls, and calendar, for example.
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A new top navigation bar will allow users to search and toggle between pages and browse their viewing history.
But there's more: A modified sidebar includes tabs up top that direct users to important functions of the app (think: threads, mentions, threads, drafts). Paid users will also get to organize channels and conversations into sections with emoji labels.
A lot is new, no doubt — but the redesign is not so much of a complete overhaul as it is a refinement of what already exists.
DeLanghe told Mashable that the redesign configures Slack’s growing list of tools and features over the years into a “simpler, more organized Slack.”
“There hasn’t always been the time or the relaxed space to really think about, philosophically, where everything should go and how it fits together — we were really focused on delivering customer value,” she said. “We hear from customers all the time that they know Slack is so powerful, that it could do so many things; but they’re just not sure how to do them … So we want to eliminate that feeling and make it easier for anybody to use Slack.”
The idea, DeLanghe added, is to amp up customizability and to adapt to the working style for users who are transitioning to Slack from other work chat apps or email-only environments.
Presumably, Slack’s new redesign — which DeLanghe said the team has worked on since late last year in collaboration with heavy users — had set out to edge out its biggest competitor, Microsoft Teams.
In a company earnings call last Thursday, Slack co-founder and CEO Stewart Butterfield highlighted how the company has been able to “win not just against the status quo, but head-to-head against Microsoft Team."
Part of that, he said, citing early findings of the company’s market research, is because “customers overwhelmingly tend to expand their Slack usage once they understand the fundamental differences” — its customizable, personable nature. (DeLanghe told me one of the requirements in the redesign's product brief is that “it had to be fun.”)
DeLanghe also said the redesign created a foundation upon which Slack can build on in the future — flexibility and design space for new features and scalability, if you will.
And that, too, is in line with one of Slack’s priorities this year, according to Butterfield: “Expanding [Slack’s] shared channels feature-set to drive new use cases in communication across organizational boundaries.”
Slack’s redesign will be rolling out to all desktop users starting Wednesday, completing in the next few weeks. A mobile version of the redesign will follow so, alongside 11 new color themes.
This comes as a result of Slack's effort to accelerate the redesign's rollout timeline due to "increased interest in remote working" amid the coronavirus pandemic, the company said in a statement.
“We already see shifts in customer behavior, from an increased interest in remote work and how Slack can be helpful in that transformation,” Butterfield said in the earning call last Thursday, against the backdrop of what he called “an environment of pronounced uncertainty.”
"Having said that, we have no uncertainty that we are in the right market with the right product at the right time and we’re confident about our opportunities to drive further innovation and growth."
Topics Work From Home COVID-19
