BFM+Exclusive

Slack Hides Complexity to Create Effortless Onboarding

8 mins

about Slack

Case study

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.