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UX is not design. The fonts, colors, and silly features like emoji are gravy. UX includes the cold experience. If you sign up with just one user, Slack creates

UX is not design. The fonts, colors, and silly features like emoji are gravy. UX includes the cold experience. If you sign up with just one user, Slack creates a couple rooms and has a bot talk to you. UX includes history management. Slack makes everything searchable and is good enough that most people can find what they want. UX includes ways to level up your proficiency with the tool. Slack doesn't force integrations, defaults to 1-click OAuth integrations, and lets you explore writing code to integrate, without getting in your way before you're ready. I don't think it's perfect, but having recently switched from Hipchat and hated on IRC-for-companies for years, they've done a lot of things right.

derefr 11y ago
To maybe make the distinction clearer: UX and "interaction design" generally are more like what people think of as "game design" than what people think of as "graphic design." They're about choice-paths, affordances, reflexes, flows, etc.
berkes 11y ago
US is also responsiveness and snappy feeling. None of which slack get right at all. The native app is merely a wrapper around their web-view, yet takes around 15 seconds to load. Then eats > 320 Mb of RAM and continues to eat more (it leaks somewhere). The web-app itself is far worse wrt speed and resource-usage. That is unacceptable, especially when you look at the alternatives it replaces: IRC, XMPP/Jabber and whatnot. I guess it mostly comes down to Slack choosing the "wrong" stack here: Web-technology is, as is shown quite often, simply not ready for such heavy UX/UIs. Sure, it can be done, but when compared to the simplicity and speed of "native" it simply does not cut it. Yet.
- dvanduzer 11y ago
  Regardless of which platform you're talking about, the Slack app is emphatically not merely a wrapper around the web view. The resource consumption of their various client interfaces can be improved, but what are you trying to compare it to? In that particular context, a better comparison of any of the Slack client apps (native/web) would be Outlook. Slack is not replacing IRC or XMPP at all. Slack uses these protocols as part of a groupware suite. As discussed elsewhere in the thread, IRC-at-companies draws mixed reactions. XMPP is a protocol that has seen very wide adoption in the enterprise, with many implementations from a variety of vendors, with a variety of resource consumption issues. XMPP is very much a web technology in the sense you're talking about. And you are correct that it proved to be a very bad stack for something like Slack, when Google first tried it in 2009: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Wave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Wave If you really think Slack has made poor technology choices, I'd suggest reading what Stewart had to say on the subject in this interview: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/182287/The_story_of_Glitch_Why_this_odd_MMO_is_shutting_down.php http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/182287/The_story_of_Glitc...
  - berkes 11y ago
    > but what are you trying to compare it to? > In that particular context, a better comparison of any of the Slack client apps (native/web) would be Outlook. This differs for everyone. For me, it merely replaces XMPP/IRC: group-chat. That is in the last 3 teams where we used slack. Others, and I guess mostly people who live in their email-inbox, may see Slack as a replacement for their Mail Suite. Again others may see it as a replacement for teleconferencing/skype. It really depends where you come from. Me, I come from a simple, integrated IRC and XMPP client. Now we all use Slack and I have a poor experience compared to the Just Works[tm] chat (through empathy) on Ubuntu. * Slack crashes 2, 3 times per week. Mostly memory issues. Empathy never crashed on me, that I can remember. * Empathy is, AFAIK always on. I switch off Slack when not working because (1) it abuses resources and (2) it addds another icon to my toolbar (empathy integrates in Ubuntu's message icon). * Empathy starts whenever I start my OS. Slack can be configured to do so. But when it does, its slow startup time and CPU-gobbling while starting makes my desktop appear sluggish. I'm comparing it to a well integrated, thin and snappy XMPP client, which is what Slack replaces for me. And Slack comes out poor. All over.

derefr 11y ago

To maybe make the distinction clearer: UX and "interaction design" generally are more like what people think of as "game design" than what people think of as "graphic design." They're about choice-paths, affordances, reflexes, flows, etc.

berkes 11y ago

US is also responsiveness and snappy feeling. None of which slack get right at all. The native app is merely a wrapper around their web-view, yet takes around 15 seconds to load. Then eats > 320 Mb of RAM and continues to eat more (it leaks somewhere). The web-app itself is far worse wrt speed and resource-usage. That is unacceptable, especially when you look at the alternatives it replaces: IRC, XMPP/Jabber and whatnot. I guess it mostly comes down to Slack choosing the "wrong" stack here: Web-technology is, as is shown quite often, simply not ready for such heavy UX/UIs. Sure, it can be done, but when compared to the simplicity and speed of "native" it simply does not cut it. Yet.

dvanduzer 11y ago
Regardless of which platform you're talking about, the Slack app is emphatically not merely a wrapper around the web view. The resource consumption of their various client interfaces can be improved, but what are you trying to compare it to? In that particular context, a better comparison of any of the Slack client apps (native/web) would be Outlook. Slack is not replacing IRC or XMPP at all. Slack uses these protocols as part of a groupware suite. As discussed elsewhere in the thread, IRC-at-companies draws mixed reactions. XMPP is a protocol that has seen very wide adoption in the enterprise, with many implementations from a variety of vendors, with a variety of resource consumption issues. XMPP is very much a web technology in the sense you're talking about. And you are correct that it proved to be a very bad stack for something like Slack, when Google first tried it in 2009: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Wave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Wave If you really think Slack has made poor technology choices, I'd suggest reading what Stewart had to say on the subject in this interview: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/182287/The_story_of_Glitch_Why_this_odd_MMO_is_shutting_down.php http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/182287/The_story_of_Glitc...
- berkes 11y ago
  > but what are you trying to compare it to? > In that particular context, a better comparison of any of the Slack client apps (native/web) would be Outlook. This differs for everyone. For me, it merely replaces XMPP/IRC: group-chat. That is in the last 3 teams where we used slack. Others, and I guess mostly people who live in their email-inbox, may see Slack as a replacement for their Mail Suite. Again others may see it as a replacement for teleconferencing/skype. It really depends where you come from. Me, I come from a simple, integrated IRC and XMPP client. Now we all use Slack and I have a poor experience compared to the Just Works[tm] chat (through empathy) on Ubuntu. * Slack crashes 2, 3 times per week. Mostly memory issues. Empathy never crashed on me, that I can remember. * Empathy is, AFAIK always on. I switch off Slack when not working because (1) it abuses resources and (2) it addds another icon to my toolbar (empathy integrates in Ubuntu's message icon). * Empathy starts whenever I start my OS. Slack can be configured to do so. But when it does, its slow startup time and CPU-gobbling while starting makes my desktop appear sluggish. I'm comparing it to a well integrated, thin and snappy XMPP client, which is what Slack replaces for me. And Slack comes out poor. All over.