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Slack is horrible. Here are my issues with these modern chat tools: * People saying 'Hey!' and then nothing. First 3 times I'll ask them to immediately post th

Slack is horrible. Here are my issues with these modern chat tools: * People saying 'Hey!' and then nothing. First 3 times I'll ask them to immediately post their question. After that I don't respond to greetings without questions. * The sheer amount of data that I need to parse. People throw things out there at random and expect you to keep up to date. At least with email the barrier is higher so that people send a condensed email. Not with Slack. It's just type and hit Enter. * The disarray of finding out what's relevant when being mentioned. A private channel? An ad-hoc group chat? An established channel? A thread in a channel? How far do you need to scroll back? @WirelessGigabit ^ really doesn't help. * People not realizing it's async. If you need me, call. Otherwise I'll treat it like an email. Context switching is heavy, and the cost of reading 'Hey!' is more than 2 seconds, it's more like 5 minutes, with a chance I go do something completely different.

iso1631 4y ago
So nothing to do with the tool, just the way people you work with use it?
- tm-guimaraes 4y ago
  Sometimes the tool shapes behaviours. Things that are easier to do, will be done more often. The folks at Doist (makers of todoist app) created Twist.com because of their discontent with slack, it's very interesting to read their blog posts regarding the tool (and others regarding async work), as they state the default settings of an app shapes a lot of the common behaviour. So, for example, their tool does not send a post on the press of the ENTER key (it creates a new line). Sure slack can also do that, but it's not the default and it has impact. Anyway, it's interesting to read on their UX decisions they seem very thoughtful on UX (even if you might not agree with the toughts), and async/remote work stuff. edit: went to look for the post, it is older than I recall, and with the old look: https://blog.doist.com/designing-twist-the-challenge-of-making-teamwork-less-stressful/ https://blog.doist.com/designing-twist-the-challenge-of-maki...
deleted 4y ago
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iso1631 4y ago

So nothing to do with the tool, just the way people you work with use it?

tm-guimaraes 4y ago
Sometimes the tool shapes behaviours. Things that are easier to do, will be done more often. The folks at Doist (makers of todoist app) created Twist.com because of their discontent with slack, it's very interesting to read their blog posts regarding the tool (and others regarding async work), as they state the default settings of an app shapes a lot of the common behaviour. So, for example, their tool does not send a post on the press of the ENTER key (it creates a new line). Sure slack can also do that, but it's not the default and it has impact. Anyway, it's interesting to read on their UX decisions they seem very thoughtful on UX (even if you might not agree with the toughts), and async/remote work stuff. edit: went to look for the post, it is older than I recall, and with the old look: https://blog.doist.com/designing-twist-the-challenge-of-making-teamwork-less-stressful/ https://blog.doist.com/designing-twist-the-challenge-of-maki...

deleted 4y ago

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