Slack 4+

I find the app constantly half a second too slow for my liking. This has the cumulative effect of making me slightly more frustrated over time as I'm using the app.

Slowness most noticeable with the delay in (or simply broken) notifications. When I see a red notification icon on the app logo, I find the fastest way to check the new update is to hard close the app and re-open, as this prompts the notifications to actually pick up the new message. It's also not a 100% success rate - sometimes I need to do this several times before the update is picked up. This has frustrated me when I've actually been reading the thread at the time, I know someone has added a comment, but it won't show up on my screen, even with a drag-refresh.

Slowness also noticeable when changing channels, navigating to threads and switching workspaces.

Slack used to be good. I won’t say great; it is a difficult job trying to give everyone the communication tools they want with a UX that is simple an quick. But the previous version of the Slack mobile app did a good job. The latest version doesn’t. I’m not averse to change, but having spent some time with the redesigned app the only thing on my mind is how frustrated I am trying to use it. Mostly because, after a few weeks, I have realised what I thought was my failure to grasp all this swiping back and forth you now have to do is actually a bug. The Jump to page or home page whatever it is, keeps disappearing. And I can’t get it back without restarting the app. Now I’ve realised restarting the app fixes it I feel less apprehensive about using it but it’s a serious defect that needs fixing. Other than that, the new interface still has me feeling lost and unsure as to what I’m looking at half the time. It doesn’t feel like an improvement. It was certainly waaaay too much change in one go.

I can’t imagine how this conversation went: “I know what would be a great feature to have - no ability to copy/paste on iPad and remove the option to edit the last message with the arrow up key. I’m sure our users are going to love this”… the silence in the room must have been deafening.

Additional great “features” is splitting channels away from groups when they have new messages. Very “convenient”, especially if you organised your conversations based on topics or utility.

This app is another clear example of someone that never used it coming up with “great ideas”. This would be ok if the website worked normally in iPad’s Safari, but it doesn’t, it forces you to use the iPad mini size which is stupid on such a large screen. I really can’t imagine what kind of chaos there is in the development team in order for this disjointed experience to exist.