Slack
UX/UI Design
Teng Lin Shih
Idil Agcagul
How might we improve the usability of Slack’s desktop app?
Enhance the message pinning function for improved visibility and organization
Clarification on the naming of different notification settings
Slack, launched in 2013, is a cloud-based collaboration tool with 32.3 million daily active users, designed to enhance productivity and communication within teams and organizations. It provides a centralized platform for real-time messaging, file sharing, and project collaboration through features like channels, direct messaging, and integrations with other productivity tools, enabling seamless teamwork regardless of location.
GOALS & MOTIVATIONS
This heuristic evaluation report on Slack aims to highlight underlying usability issues through assessments from usability experts on how well Slack works, alongside providing suggestions for improvement.
USERS & TASKS
Three usability experts evaluated 9 tasks for heuristic violations, ranked on a severity scale of 1 (Minor) to 4 (Critical)
Focus areas included:
- Workspace and channel setup and sharing
- Message sending, reactions, and pinning
- Notification preferences and availability status
- Third-party configurations
Key Findings
01
Users expect a clearer visual indication when pinning a message, but there only seems to be a subtle change in color
Heuristics violated: Visibility of System Status & Recognition Rather than Recall
02
Slack’s custom notifications allow pausing alerts until a set time, but a separate notification schedule setting below serves a different purpose, despite similar wording.
Heuristics violated: Consistency and Standards & Recognition Rather than Recall
Recommendations
ISSUE
Pinned Messages Get Buried Under Multiple Messages
Pinned messages in Slack can become buried under new messages, reducing their visibility and effectiveness in prioritizing important information.
Pinning Feature Lacks Visibility
The pinning feature is only accessible through the ‘More actions’ tab when hovering over a message, and evaluators noted the need for clearer visual feedback, as the current subtle color change is insufficient.
RECOMMENDATION
Enhance the message pinning function for improved visibility and organization
Introducing a pin icon on hover would give users a quick and intuitive way to pin important messages. This streamlined process would make pinning more accessible and encourage more frequent use of the feature.
Secondly, keeping pinned messages visible at the top of the conversation thread would enhance their prominence, making it easier for users to reference important information without scrolling through the chat history.
ISSUE
Unclear Notification Settings
Slack’s ‘Pause Notifications’ tab includes two settings: ‘Custom...’ for pausing notifications until a set time, and ‘Set a notification schedule’ for managing notifications based on a schedule. However, unclear wording makes these settings seem similar.
‘Custom...’ window under pause notifications menu
‘Set a notification schedule’ page under pause notifications
RECOMMENDATION
Clarification on the naming of different notification settings
This adjustment clarifies that ‘Custom...’ pauses notifications until a set time, helping users differentiate it from ‘Set a notification schedule.’ Clearer wording reduces confusion and ensures users can easily choose their preferred settings.
- Implement recommended solutions to streamline Slack’s user interface
- Provide users with clearer and more intuitive communication and collaboration tools
- Enable users to easily access important messages
In this project, I learned how to conduct usability research using heuristic evaluation and how to write clear, multi-step tasks for the evaluators. This experience improved my ability to evaluate design systematically and showed me the value of detailed task breakdowns.