App Redesign

Slack

Redesigning the Slack notification system to promote healthy digital boundaries in a post-pandemic world.
Context
January 2023 - March 2023 || 10 Weeks
Role
Product Designer
Team
Catherine Oei, Jodie Li, Thoa Nguyen
INTRODUCTION

Background

With the onset of the pandemic and rise of remote work and collaboration, Slack has overtaken the collaborative space as the go-to collaborative tool. With many users being signed onto Slack for 9 hours per day, they'll often receive dozens of notifications from a variety of channels which can add to the stress of daily life.

As frequent Slack users, my team and I know firsthand the overwhelming notifications and organizational challenges that users face, and wanted to help alleviate this stress by exploring its sources within the application. Over the course of 10 weeks, we focused on understanding the challenges with Slack’s current notification system and creating a redesign that would promote a healthy balance of online collaboration and work-life balance.
WHAT I DID

Investigating the Problem

We interviewed 9 Slack users (ages 19-50) who used Slack as the main communication platform for their professional and semi-professional organizations. 

Amongst the interviewees that we sought out, almost all considered Slack as the most widely-used professional messaging platform, and 9 out of 9 users had notifications turned on. 

Due to the constant presence of notifications, users’ daily workflows outside of work hours are continually interrupted, particularly on the mobile Slack app, which 8 out of 9 users mentioned using for on-the-go messaging and checking notifications. 
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Though user response time was often related to the nature or urgency of the message a user received, currently, Slack notifications lack visual signifiers that offer relevant information to message receivers. 
‍“[I]t's hard to keep up with the ever scrolling conveyer belt of messages. You feel like you need to constantly keep checking on what's going on [...] so you don't miss anything important.”
-Slack User
‍“I want to see more relevant messages than non-relevant.”
-Slack User (20)
THE PROBLEM
The constant inflow of notifications and messages from Slack disrupts users’ work-life balance, leading to decreased work productivity and increased stress levels.
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Due to Slack's lack of effective tools to streamline message content and manage notifications, users are often forced to sort through irrelevant or repetitive messages, have trouble prioritizing messages they want to respond to, and become overwhelmed with notifications.
IN ESSENCE

Slack users in professional and pre-professional organizations need a way to streamline Slack message content in order to maintain healthy digital boundaries between work and life in a post-pandemic world.

Our Solution

Redesigning Slack to have better message and notification optimization, so users can maintain a healthy work-life balance.
Prioritize and streamline responses through a message priority system.
Users can flag the urgency of their message, so message receivers can better prioritize their responses. Messages can be marked as:
  • ❗️Important - to indicate that the message is important and viewing is recommended, but doesn’t require an immediate response.
  • ⏰ Urgent - to indicate that the message is urgent, and an immediate response is highly recommended.
Organize incoming messages through content tagging.
Users can label and categorize messages with either admin created tags, or custom made tags.

This increases the visibility of message content and organizes the notification stream, so users feel less overwhelmed.
Set, view, and share a custom notification schedule.
Users can easily set boundaries and manage their work-life balance by scheduling "available hours" and setting specific times for receiving notifications, reducing the stress and distraction caused by constant notifications.
View full interactive prototype here
CONCLUSION

Impact

Our design solution was met with positive responses from peers, many of whom expressed interest in seeing a similar feature integrated into the official Slack app.
DESIGN COMMENTARIES

User Testing and Prototyping Process

Through three rounds of iteration, we were able to refine our final prototype by leveraging A/B testing on various versions of our message organization and notification scheduling Slack features. This approach helped us identify the necessary improvements and narrow down our design solutions.
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What were these changes?
REFLECTION
Even if you don't see the whole staircase, just take the first step. 👣
Due to the extensive range of issues highlighted in our initial user research, my team and I initially found it difficult to generate a comprehensive solution, and we were worried that our design ideas weren't ambitious enough. But as we advanced with the task of expanding Slack's existing features, we realized that no matter how "small scale" our proposed features may seem, every step requires intricate attention. Good design is reached through considerable thought and consideration behind each step.
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made with ❤ by K.LA