A collection of articles and resources from the design team at Slack.
Slack is a loved product, and that s not an accident In 2013, Stewart Butterfield wrote what amounted to a promise: You re buying a commitment to the craft of making high quality software: polished, responsive, attractive, simple, powerful, and, above all, useful. You re buying attention to detail that saves you time and makes your life just [ ] The post Product Quality: A Shared Commitment to…
The Question We Kept Hearing How do I use AI? That question, typed in a DM rather than asked out loud, told us everything. Our design team was not short on curiosity. What was missing was somewhere to be a beginner. A space where not knowing wasn’t a liability, but the whole point. So we [ ] The post We Didn t Teach Our Designers AI: We Built a Place Where They Could Learn It Together appeared…
The biggest shift AI has brought to design isn t that designers can now write production code. It s that we can finally generate evidence before committing to anything. There s a lot of conversation about AI affecting production: designers pushing code and shipping something closer to the final product. That matters. But the bigger opportunity is even [ ] The post How I Validated Design Decisions…
For most of my design career, Figma was where the real work happened. I d design screens, build prototypes, then hand off the designs for someone else to build. If something felt slightly wrong in production, we d go back and forth trying to articulate what it should feel like in words. This process worked well enough, [ ] The post Designing Where the Pixels Actually Live appeared first on Slack…
AI has eaten the technology industry. What started as a slow, hallucination-prone chatbot has become something much harder to ignore. As a designer, it can feel like the ground is shifting under your feet, quietly at first, then all at once. Every week, something new disrupts your workflow, your toolset, your expectations about what s possible. [ ] The post Leading design through the AI shift…
Everyone has felt it: the anxiety of returning to Slack after a meeting, unsure where to start. Which channels have updates that matter? Did someone mention you? Are there DMs waiting? For years, staying caught up in Slack has meant jumping between surfaces, trying to piece together what needs your attention. This universal feeling of [ ] The post No Small Task: Evolving the Way Millions Catch Up…
Design Operations is all about helping designers do the best work of their lives. Our job is to clear the path so designers can focus on what they do best: design. At many tech companies, you’ll find a more traditional embedded model—one Design Program Manager (DPM) per major product area. But in a lean team [ ] The post How to Make a Big Impact with a Small Team: Design Ops at Slack appeared…
You spoke, and we listened. While working in Slack, there s always a lot going on: you may be added to a new channel, mentioned by your manager in another channel, and direct-messaged by a colleague – all while more unread badges multiply in your sidebar. It can be tricky to tell what s urgent and important [ ] The post Raising the Volume Quietly: A Designer’s Challenge appeared first on Slack…
Remember when you first heard that soothing music while joining a Huddle? Or watched the catch-up animation dance across your mobile app? Maybe you ve been charmed by a friendly message and quirky emoji after clearing your unread messages, or enjoyed the ability to have full conversations with colleagues via custom emojis alone. These aren t happy [ ] The post Crafting Digital Delight: Inside…
With an impressive 80% participation rate, one thing we attribute to the wild success of Slack Design s mentorship program is simplicity. We’ve designed it to be easy to engage with, striking a balance between structured guidance and the flexibility to evolve based on the needs of participants. Next? Accessibility. We believe that mentorship is a [ ] The post Mentorship at Slack: Lessons from a…
Design that is inclusive and accessible almost always works better for everyone. But once in a while we reach a genuine dilemma — the more technically accessible choice adds friction or breaks expectations for everyone else. In these moments, someone inevitably asks: Can we just make it a preference? “Make it a preference” is sometimes [ ] The post Should we make it a preference?: On…
If you work in design, you’ve probably already heard of design engineering. It’s not a new concept, and similar roles — such as Design Technologists, UI/UX Engineers, and Creative Technologists — have existed in software development for decades. These roles typically involve individuals with high proficiency in both design and engineering, tailored to meet organizational [ ] The post Prototyping…
Think about your experience using other products. What made them feel good to use? With the launch of Recap — our new Slack AI feature that provides daily summaries of channels you want to keep tabs on but aren’t active in — we knew it had to go beyond just working as expected. Functionality is [ ] The post Prioritizing craft in Recap, our newest AI-powered feature appeared first on Slack Design .
Let’s face it: besides “let’s take this offline,” the word culture is one of the most overused pieces of corporate jargon. And if you’re in any sort of people operations role, it’s practically written in your job description to uphold a strong team culture. But how exactly do you do that in a way that [ ] The post How we developed a better way to learn at Slack Design appeared first on Slack…
In software design we have all heard the phrase well-crafted user experience. It may have come up in conversation, in an article or in a job interview. Indeed, conversation and debate about craft, what it is and why it matters, has been a through-line during my 20+ years in tech. I’ve worked at companies that [ ] The post Craft in design: What it is & why it matters appeared first on Slack Design…
Grace Sunnell is a Lead Product Designer formally for Slack Connect and now evolving the experience of Slack AI. Jeff Robke is a Senior Product Manager focused on Slack Connect for Enterprise customers. Think of a time at work where things felt effortless. You felt like you could do anything, climb over any obstacle. Now, [ ] The post Two heads are better than one: Building strong partnerships in…
Let’s face it: AI technology, especially in the workplace context, is a sensitive topic. On the Slack design team, we know that no matter how large a deadline looms, it’s important to keep humans at the center of the experience. This sentiment is well-worn in a space crowded with well-meaning tech types, so we got [ ] The post How we launched AI within Slack in 6 months appeared first on Slack…
Charting the crit terrain Critique—or, to use its more casual truncation, “crit”— is one of the most powerful team-powered tools that can contribute to a designer’s growth. The merits of a forum in which a designer’s work is evaluated and discussed by their peers at length seem obvious, to say the least, but often, many [ ] The post Pencils Down, Ideas Up: Navigating Design Critiques with Grace…
Does this look familiar? With more types of work happening on Slack, teams becoming larger, and new features like Canvas expanding what Slack can do, our UI was becoming congested. Keeping track of the most important stuff was no longer easy or straight-forward. As designers, we felt this problem too. New features had to be [ ] The post A more focused, productive Slack appeared first on Slack…
Just like the world around us, Slack has grown and changed significantly over the last decade. What started out as a simple chat tool is now a multi-modal product that allows for more meaningful collaboration with features like voice clips, video clips, huddles, canvases, lists, Slack Connect, Sales Elevate, and so much more. But with [ ] The post Re-designing Slack on Mobile appeared first on…
As we embarked on the largest evolution to Slack’s information architecture, us designers believed it was the perfect opportunity to evolve Slack’s iconic look and feel. While the undertaking would be no small feat, we were inspired to make Slack even more pleasant, more personal, and easier to understand. Make it more Slack-y. We decided [ ] The post A new visual language for Slack appeared first…
The timing was right. We were adding in new features like huddles, canvases, lists, and others into a UI system that was originally designed solely for messaging capabilities. Meanwhile, research showed users on the biggest and most active teams were struggling to stay on top of the basics. Our product navigation was reaching its limits. [ ] The post How our biggest redesign yet came to be…
I’ve spent the past five years at Slack building both the Slack brand and the Slack creative team. While I’m immensely proud of both accomplishments, the latter takes the cake. While it’s important to hire the right people, set clear expectations and develop seamless processes, we wouldn’t be one of the most collaborative and wonderful [ ] The post Living and creating our values on the Slack…
While Slack fields many requests, the creation of a feature to add people to a direct message was something our design team heard frequently. When we first started to roll up our sleeves and explore how to build this feature, it didn’t seem that difficult. After all, you could already add people to channels. It [ ] The post Complex, compact, celebratory: Bringing the Add to MPDM feature to life in…
When Slack s new website launched in 2017, I felt like a kid in a candy store. As a brand designer, there s nothing more exciting than having new brand fonts and an entire library of illustrations at our disposal. However, this creative freedom was short-lived and replaced with frustration. Much like a sugar crash! Our new [ ] The post A behind-the-scenes look at building the Slack Design…
It may be weird to say my life changed because of an app most people use to fall down multi-hour rabbit holes to watch people dance or try out a viral recipe like NyQuil chicken, but it did. My name is Lucila Hernandez Del Carmen, I’m a Year Up alumnus-turned-Slack Design Operations intern for the [ ] The post My time as a Year Up intern at Slack appeared first on Slack Design .
Hi, my name is Stella, a designer working on the Slack platform administration experience. My job is to take care of a special group of users, our Slack administrators. While many think of Slack as a “people product,” we’re also a robust enterprise product. According to Okta’s 2022 Business at Work report, the average number [ ] The post How we design for admin experiences: baking good content…
Hey friends! MJ and Sheila here to talk to you about Design Ops at Slack, our passion for the field, and the guiding principles we live by in our day-to-day work. For anyone not familiar with the Design Ops function, we hope this read gives you a glimpse into what we do, the teams we [ ] The post Design Ops on being changemakers, team cheerleaders and great listeners appeared first on Slack Design…
A huge international campaign. A compelling headline on a city billboard. A viral video. They all have one thing in common: they started with an idea. And it’s likely that the journey to come up with The Idea behind them all was filled with many moments of delight, frustration, and self-doubt. I know this because [ ] The post The myth of the lightbulb moment: How to actually come up with ideas…
Slack’s accessibility team recently launched a series of changes to make navigating around Slack more reliable and efficient for keyboard-only and screen reader users. While our accessibility had significantly improved over the last few years, we were still hearing from blind and low-vision users that moving around the interface felt disorienting and noisy. One user [ ] The post What we ve learned…
When you’re looking for an internship, there can be pressure to have all the right stuff—enrollment in a design program at a prestigious university, prior internship experience at big name companies, completed case studies of real world projects, and more. However, if everyone had these same things, it would be pretty boring and make the [ ] The post How to bring your work (and yourself) to…
We all get our work done differently. Some of us are at our desks from 9 to 5, while others work more flexible hours. Some of us commute to work, while others work from home (or do both). Regardless of our setup, we are always connected and available, either through our desktop or our phones. [ ] The post How we redesigned Slack for the iPad appeared first on Slack Design .
Slack is primarily designed for team communication in channels. Channels are where work happens: It’s where teams exchange ideas, get feedback, and share files. It’s a constant stream of conversation that keeps everyone on the same page. But plenty of important information in Slack exists in formats other than messages. Think about how often you [ ] The post Beyond the last message: Designing for…
Hi, we’re Alison and Zoe, Associate and Junior Designers, respectively, and we just joined Slack in fall of 2021. Our first project here: building guidelines for onboarding emails. If you’ve ever joined a Slack workspace, you’ve gotten one of these. In fact, every person that interacts with Slack as a product will receive onboarding emails [ ] The post How we transcend languages and formats — even…
How Slack invests in big little details through Customer Love Sprints Most businesses say they love their customers. Slack is no exception! But what does that mean practically? How do we actually express that love? One way is to add big, new features. These are effective, essential, even, when it comes to how enterprise software [ ] The post Sweating the small stuff appeared first on Slack Design…
Close your eyes and imagine yourself using Slack. What are two phrases you d use to describe that experience? Whatever your phrases are, hopefully they’re at least somewhat synonymous with Don t make me think and Be a great host. These are the two of five organizational product principles that we live by when it comes to [ ] The post How we layered product principles to refresh Slack notifications…
Fostering a sense of connection with your team is probably the hardest part of working remotely. When you work in an office together, you can walk by someone’s desk and give them a friendly “hello,” ask if they want to grab coffee later, and even share a joke with another colleague when you realize you [ ] The post Getting to know your remote teammates appeared first on Slack Design .
Being immersed in Slack’s highly collaborative culture and an even closer-knit team, saying no to meetings used to be slightly terrifying. But when I realized my calendar wasn’t always working for me, I had to make some adjustments to my thinking and my RSVPs. Whatever’s at the heart of your own “meeting decline guilt”—the patriarchy, [ ] The post How to say no to meetings without feeling guilty…
We recently announced the rollout of audio and video clips in Slack, which allow anyone on Slack’s paid plans to send audio, video, and screen share messages. With clips, you can quickly capture an idea, celebrate team wins, or present your work in a more personal way. Clips are transcribed, captioned, and searchable, so they’re [ ] The post The story of Slack Clips: Prototyping the path to audio…
There are plenty of comprehensive pieces on the practice of product design out there—our own Kyle Turman has written an excellent post on the Pillars of Digital Product Design—but there’s a crucial layer of thinking that can sometimes elude the design process itself, partially because it’s so obvious that it’s hiding in plain sight. “Of [ ] The post Make things that people want (instead of what…