🎨 Slack's biggest redesign ever

Slack, the workplace communication platform, has unveiled its first major user interface (UI) redesign in three years. This overhaul offers users improved navigation and introduces a suite of productivity tools to enhance the platform's efficiency.

UI Placement Changes:

Channels, previously on the left, have moved to the right side.

A new taskbar on the left now houses the Home button, which holds traditional company channels, and offers swift access to Direct Messages (DMs).

Notification bubbles on these buttons inform users of active messages or mentions.

Objective and Background:

Noah Weiss, Slack’s Chief Product Officer, shared that the revamped design aims to alleviate users' anxiety over missing crucial messages.

The new design also emphasizes features introduced after the last significant update in 2022, such as "huddles".

Weiss recollected that the previous major design alteration in 2020 addressed the needs of users increasingly relying on Slack due to the inability to attend physical offices.

New Features:

Users can now set reminders to address conversations later.

A "Later" function displays all flagged conversations and tasks for future attention, alongside tracking in-progress, completed, and archived activities.

The "Activity" button highlights recent mentions, reactions, and app notifications. Dedicated tabs further segregate these notifications, including one that specifically displays reactions to a user's posts.

All notifications appear in a chronological timeline, with an option to filter unread messages. The updated DMs tab shares this feature.

A fresh "create" button on the left taskbar enables users to draft messages, start huddles, or create channels.

The platform's search capability has been refined. Instead of channel-specific searches, users can now search across DMs, threads, etc. Additionally, they can toggle between messages, files, people, and channels during their search.

AI Integration and Future Prospects:

While end-to-end encryption remains uncertain, Slack’s renewed "create" function hints at a stronger alignment towards AI tools.

In March, Slack shared its plans to integrate a chatbot similar to ChatGPT.

Weiss hinted at the potential introduction of AI functionalities that can effectively condense extensive text into concise summaries.

Rollout Plan:

New teams will experience the updated UI immediately, while existing users can anticipate the fresh look and additional AI functionalities in the upcoming months.