The only real issue I have is unfortunately a dealbreaker for me.
Right now I can see at a glance all of my workspaces and if any have a notification. I use a lot of workspaces and use this to see if any need attention.
With the new UI the only way to see this is to hover over the workspace icon. What used to be an unconscious visual scan now must be a conscious action.
Yes, multiple workspaces is not effectively entirely broken for the reasons you mentioned.
I was on about 10 workspaces before, many were just fun groups I was a part of. But the UI was so bad for multiple workspaces that I had to leave almost all of the fun groups.
I still have 2-3 slack channels that I must be on though, and knowing what notifications are in which group is impossible at a glance. I am thinking about running 1 on desktop and any others in separate browser windows as a hack, but I'm not sure if this is better or worse.
I'm hoping they have some way of allowing you to see multiple workspaces again!
All things considered, I like the new design. There are some nice features, like the activity tab being a more sane way to view unreads than previously available. I'm also a sucker for the new custom theming support. It's also nice to see slack workflows/automations being more discoverable. I was starting to get concerned that this feature would be canned.
Not knowing which workspace has notifications at a quick glance is a huge pain though.
My first thought seeing it yesterday was, wow this looks like an email client. Wide list of chats, message previews, folders and workspaces, all tucked into an interface reminiscent of Outlook. The organizers have won. What’s next?
A new twist on Zawinski's law? (“every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.”)
"Every program attempts to expand until it looks like a mail client. Those programs which cannot so expand, are replaced by ones which can"
Overall I think the new design is fine - the biggest gripe is the colour themes which seem to mostly hark back to Windows Vista / 7 aero vibes at the expense of contrast and ease of reading.
That was my first thought from the screenshots. I don't have the best near vision and the new colors look much more difficult to read. I use Slack at work and am not looking forward to this update.
Ummm how do you know what Slack workspace you're in?
Use case: I'm in #general. Can I ask a clarifying question about $DAYJOB's (currently private) Q4 plans... or did I accidentally leak that private information because no I'm _actually_ in the #general for _Javascript Geniuses Slacking Together_ community?
You can still see the current workspace icon in the upper left. You just can't see the icons of any *other* workspaces. Which I find maddening for other reasons.
Another cycle? I've seen it so many times. Designers and front end devs need to do something so they refresh the UI every few years to justify their existence. Thanks to SaaS we now have no choice if/when we upgrade.
> Massive respect for the amount of crap they put up with from their tools.
I'm not sure if it's just me being overly cynical, or just having an outsider's view, but the Frontend Dev world seems to be stuck in this loop of rewriting everything with a new framework.
Because you need to rewrite in some new framework constantly, and basically nothing is compatible with the new version - well, it's an opportunity to redesign the UI again.
I'm not one to say any system is ever perfect. But what are they trying to fix? The slack UI is overall pretty decent, and this looks like an iterative step back, judging from the comments about multiple workspaces.
I saw some discussion on r/slack that the majority of users only have 1-2 workspaces. For a user like that I could see this UI as a cleanup. And I can understand why they make the multi-workspace use cases harder, as much as I hate it.
This change seems like a surefire way to ensure the majority of users only have 1-2 workspaces, forever. Why they prioritized making it hard to make heavier use of their product is beyond me.
I have been a holdout on the desktop app and just have two different workspaces opened in two different tabs in a dedicated Firefox profile. As far as I can remember, some minor UI changes may have appeared in one workspace days or weeks ahead of the other.
Frankly, I wasn't barely aware that there was a multi-workspace Slack UI... I've seen the add/switch workspace menu but never used it.
Hopefully they won't break my current flow via changes to the auth/state model.
Currently, it doesn't seem to mind that each browser tab is a different login to a different workspace, so I can just ignore the multi-workspace features. This works even though they have the same apparent web origin, just different "client" IDs in the URL.
After an hour or so I got pretty used to it. The "Home" view is almost identical to how the whole app used to be. The other views just give different ways to view DMs, messages marked for later, etc.
We had the era of Slack-like interface, now it's time for Teams-like interface.
Outlook recently changed it and I absolutely hated it. Took me a good 2 weeks to get used to it. I was used to clicking on the bottom to open my calendar, now everything moved and I look everywhere BUT the left sidebar which was recently added. And, to make things worse, the icon is not your traditional calendar icon and you don't get a tooltip saying it'll open your Calendar when you hover over it.
I disliked Teams' interface for this and now I hate it even more because this seems to be the new shitty trend UX is going to.
Agreed. Teams as an app in general is clunky AF and just not impressive in any way (other than integration into MS products if thats your kink...its not mine)
The one that pissed me off was moving workflows to the top of the screen rather than having them in the chat box. The org I work for uses a lot of them, and they're all hidden behind a small button that takes me out of the flow trying to find it everyday
I’m calling it now. In five years there will be the next iteration of slack like tools. They will raise tens or hundreds of millions of dollars and be good for another 5-10 years before enshittification.
All these apps constantly redesigning themselves makes me long for the days when everything was disconnected and you had to make a conscious choice to upgrade or not by installing from a bunch of floppies. Imagine a world where the automakers could break into your garage any time, without warning, and replace your steering wheel with a little joystick, new buttons in the ceiling instead of footpedals. No-one would tolerate that shit. Would they????
There was a brief, glorious period when SaaS and mobile apps made our lives better. Now it's just a rollercoaster of stress caused by corporate ADHD and non-stop enshittification.
I seriously do not understand why Slack decided to have workspace level design settings. I use 6 workspaces of which 2 have decided to switch. Now this mixed up workflow is driving me insane.
The design switch should be on app level. I rarely say this, but this is just retarded. Multi-workspace workflow is a core use-case in Slack.
45 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 150 ms ] threadRight now I can see at a glance all of my workspaces and if any have a notification. I use a lot of workspaces and use this to see if any need attention.
With the new UI the only way to see this is to hover over the workspace icon. What used to be an unconscious visual scan now must be a conscious action.
I was on about 10 workspaces before, many were just fun groups I was a part of. But the UI was so bad for multiple workspaces that I had to leave almost all of the fun groups.
I still have 2-3 slack channels that I must be on though, and knowing what notifications are in which group is impossible at a glance. I am thinking about running 1 on desktop and any others in separate browser windows as a hack, but I'm not sure if this is better or worse.
I'm hoping they have some way of allowing you to see multiple workspaces again!
Not knowing which workspace has notifications at a quick glance is a huge pain though.
"Every program attempts to expand until it looks like a mail client. Those programs which cannot so expand, are replaced by ones which can"
It being fine seems quite wasteful though. Should it not be better for it to be worth the resource expenditure?
Use case: I'm in #general. Can I ask a clarifying question about $DAYJOB's (currently private) Q4 plans... or did I accidentally leak that private information because no I'm _actually_ in the #general for _Javascript Geniuses Slacking Together_ community?
Vs having the list of workspaces on the left with the current one highlighted-with-a-border
This is one of the main reasons why I avoid using any SaaS services whenever possible.
That being said, I don't need a new UI every 12 months.
I'm not sure if it's just me being overly cynical, or just having an outsider's view, but the Frontend Dev world seems to be stuck in this loop of rewriting everything with a new framework.
Because you need to rewrite in some new framework constantly, and basically nothing is compatible with the new version - well, it's an opportunity to redesign the UI again.
You act like devs have any say in this, it's always UX and PMs
Can you explain your reasoning? I can't think of any reason they would want people using less of their product.
I have been a holdout on the desktop app and just have two different workspaces opened in two different tabs in a dedicated Firefox profile. As far as I can remember, some minor UI changes may have appeared in one workspace days or weeks ahead of the other.
Frankly, I wasn't barely aware that there was a multi-workspace Slack UI... I've seen the add/switch workspace menu but never used it.
Currently, it doesn't seem to mind that each browser tab is a different login to a different workspace, so I can just ignore the multi-workspace features. This works even though they have the same apparent web origin, just different "client" IDs in the URL.
Been in that situation a few times, and we went above the message display limit only after adding bots relaying our production warnings.
Outlook recently changed it and I absolutely hated it. Took me a good 2 weeks to get used to it. I was used to clicking on the bottom to open my calendar, now everything moved and I look everywhere BUT the left sidebar which was recently added. And, to make things worse, the icon is not your traditional calendar icon and you don't get a tooltip saying it'll open your Calendar when you hover over it.
I disliked Teams' interface for this and now I hate it even more because this seems to be the new shitty trend UX is going to.
Time to start finding alternatives and betting.
There was a brief, glorious period when SaaS and mobile apps made our lives better. Now it's just a rollercoaster of stress caused by corporate ADHD and non-stop enshittification.
The design switch should be on app level. I rarely say this, but this is just retarded. Multi-workspace workflow is a core use-case in Slack.