Does Slack Follow Slack’s Product Principles? Should?You?

In 2021, Slack published a Tech Crunch article reproduced in their blog about their “product principles.” The principles are:

1. Don’t make me think
2. Be a great host
3. Prototype the path
4. Don’t reinvent the wheel
5. Make bigger, bolder bets

Hmmmm…..

• Don’t make me think is always a good principle.
• What is a great host? What is a bad host?
• Sure, we prototype, but did we give Designers enough time to do great work? Are we usability testing and then giving Designers time to iterate and improve? Did we use the right prototype for the job? Or are we modeling interactive digital experiences with a tool that doesn’t allow the modeling of interactively-realistic experiences? Did we prototype well if nobody can type in a form field?
• What does not reinventing a wheel mean to Slack?
• What is a big or bold bet to Slack? Why are we betting? Are we replacing knowledge and evidence with bets, assumptions, or hopes?

What do these?mean?

To me, these are a bit on the fluffy side. We might think we know what Slack means by any of these, but we would be guessing. How does Slack use these to decide or take action? We don’t really know. We could look at what they deliver us, and try to see how these principles came to life.

Here is an example from the above-linked Slack blog?post:

Take our principle “Don’t make me think.” It means that all our efforts should serve to ensure that using Slack feels effortless, giving users more time to focus on the work that matters. When we develop products and features, which we do collaboratively with customers using Slack Connect, we think about how they will reduce the amount of cognitive load users encounter every step of the way.

If I’m a person using this feature, is it making my work life simpler? Is that ultimately changing how I work for the better? This is what our users love about Slack, and it’s how we’ve differentiated ourselves. It’s seen not just in our product, but in all aspects of our brand.

This is a really interesting example since I find Slack Connect to be endlessly infuriating, and the opposite of “don’t make me think.” My experience of Slack Connect tends to look like this:

1. A workspace I’m not in invites me to their Slack, but not as a member. As some sort of guest. Do I understand the difference? Is this clear? Cognitive Load!
2. Because they invited me with an email address, every Slack workspace I’m in thinks I should respond to this invite in that workspace. That means that (currently for me) nine Slack workspaces will pressure me to accept the outside invitation in each workspace. Do I accept the invite in all of them? None of them? Which one? Cognitive Load!
3. Every workspace I’m in isn’t paid. This means that if I accept a Slack Connect invitation in an unpaid workspace, it expires quickly, and I’ll be thrown out and unable to access the workspace that invited me. What do I do to solve this? Can I solve this? Why was I invited to a workspace I can’t stay in for long? Cognitive Load!
4. I start getting Slackbot messages and emails from all nine of my current workspaces telling me I’m running out of time to accept the Slack connect invitation. It’s a freaking avalanche of contacts (and badging on every workspace as if I’m missing an important message), and I can’t opt out or stop these messages or emails. I’m still not sure what to do. Cognitive Load!
5. I email the people who invited me, and tell them I can’t join their workspace without adding the invitation to a paid workspace, and I’m not part of any paid workspaces. The people sending me the invite are usually confused, and have no idea what I’m talking about. They invited me… what’s my problem? Cognitive Load for everybody involved.

Did Slack use any of their product principles when creating Slack?Connect??

It’s endless moments of confusion, frustration, and cognitive load.?

• Is Slack a great host if I can’t understand what’s going on, can’t join a Connect invitation, and can’t solve my own problem??
• They might have prototyped, but did they test how usable this is across users of different types and familiarity with deeper Slack features??
• Is having two different ways to invite someone to your workspace a big and bold bet? Is it a good bet, something unlikely to be confusing or frustrating?

Did they consider the experience of someone like me, who is only in unpaid Slack workspaces? The secret of Slack Connect is that a paid workspace expects you to add this invitation to another paid workspace, but this is a knowledge gap. Most people don’t know this.?

If Slack only tests this with paid customers, which is possible as that might be who is easiest for them to test with?—?or who they really care about?—?then they might not know about an experience like mine. Or if there is no persona for the community manager who will never pay for Slack, they might not care what my experience is.?

They’re allowed to not care. But then they shouldn’t be surprised when I leave. A Slack workspace I was in just moved to MS Teams. That’s a statement.

Let’s look at what Slack delivers, and check their product principles.

In 2023, Slack made a number of design and UX changes. I saw several posts on LinkedIn from people who disliked these and found them confusing.

Which of those principles were followed by Slack changing:

• The sidebar to something many of us didn’t want? How many of us looked for a way to undo the change or get our old sidebar back??
• The color scheme of a workspace??
• Reordering channels and private messages so that something with recent activity is now at the top of the previously alphabetized list. The order keeps changing based on activity. Monster cognitive load. I can’t seem to undo this, and just have everything be alphabetical, even if there is recent activity.
• The use of badging on a workspace in the sidebar? It used to be that you saw a simple dot for new posts and additions to threads, but you saw a different color dot and number only for private messages. Now, it’s a different color dot and number for private messages and additions to threads. There doesn’t seem to be a way to change this. Every addition to every thread has a badge like it’s a private message.?

As an unpaid workspace admin, Slack automatically gives me a “free trial” of paid features a few times a?year.

I don’t want this. I have no way to opt out. My workspace confuses people for weeks as we suddenly have random features that later are gone. This is designed to make my community request that the features stay, which would pressure me into paying for the workspace. I will never pay for this workspace. And fun side note, my community has never asked me to pay for Slack so they could use the advanced features.

Which product principles were used when Slack decided to push people into a free trial for something they didn’t want, can’t opt out of, and would never pay for??

• We can pretend that’s a big and bold bet, but is any of this customer-centric? A good experience? A reason to love Slack? Or a reason to feel increasingly alienated by it??
• Is Slack being a good host, or are they hosting a party I’d love to leave… or that wants to see me leave??

We have a Slack community and two Discord communities.

You can find our online communities at https://deltacx.com/links. Please join! The Discords are currently quieter, but it’s good to slowly build them up now.?

I predict a future in which Slack offers a limited free trial, and then nobody uses Slack for free. I predict a future in which my Slack community isn’t welcome on Slack, and we transition to Discord.

Conclusion: design and product principles are only as good?as…

1. How actionable they are. If they are fluffy, vague, or meaningless, then everybody can pretend you’re following them, even when you create garbage that’s what I call customer-peripheric (anti-customer-centric).
2. How consistently you follow them. If you are dedicated to intuitive experiences that don’t require people to think, and then someone dreams up Slack Connect, it shouldn’t see the light of day until it’s completely intuitive for every user type. Or it shouldn’t exist at all because it’s a confusing and limited variation of being semi-invited to someone’s Slack workspace, and people shouldn’t need training on what it means.
3. Accountability when principles are not followed or gone against. Is anybody in trouble if your product is a bad host? High cognitive load? Prototyped or tested badly… bad prototype, wrong type of prototype, wrong testing participants, bad usability testing, incorrect conclusions, greenlighting a concept or design that doesn’t work well for users, etc?

Connect with us or learn more:

• CustomerCentricity.com?—?our website
• youtube.com/@cx-cc ? —?YouTube channel
• patreon.com/cxcc ? —?online community and free mailing list
• cxcc.to/ckys?—?“Customers Know You Suck,” my recent book on improving customer adoption, satisfaction, and retention