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Skills you'll build
Reducing friction without hiding complexity
Using dynamic inputs to regain user attention
Avoiding early decisions that hurt long-term habits
There are two things I believe to be true about Slack:
- The individual key flows feel effortless and simple.
- The cumulative experience feels noisy and distracting.
This isn't a contrarian view. In my study on noise, I mentioned how Slack themselves are experimenting with ways to make workspaces less overwhelming.
By default, it's an always-on tool without boundaries—where anyone can distract an entire company by posting a meme in a single channel.
There's a possibility that by hiding some of these complexities, Slack have created an effortless onboarding process, that is doomed to become noisy.
To set the tone; Slack is a best-in-class product, and some of the following techniques you'll be able to replicate easily.
But, it's important to discuss some of the trade-offs.
Case study
Written by Peter Ramsey
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