Usability Testing: Slack

“Team communication for the 21st century.”

Slack is a platform for team communication: everything in one place, instantly searchable, available wherever you go.

Objective

Identify usability issues and pain points that may arise in the ten tasks I've identified. I tried exploring slack for the very first time after being invited to join in the group chat.

Test Tasks

1. Activate account
2. Sign-in.
3. Edit Profile
4. Update Photo
5. Chat
6. Chat with everyone
7. Upload and share files
8. Contribute
9. Edit interface preference
10. Sign-out

Analysis

Ingress was the reason of me knowing and joining slack. Having many Ingress players, hangout cannot accommodate all players in one chat room. Hangout can only accommodate utmost 30 participants. It was my first time hearing slack. They say it is a chat room which can accommodate many members/ users. I was asked to fill out a form for me to be able to receive a slack group chat invitation.

1. Activate account

After filling out the form I've waited for the confirmation of my request. It was sent to me through Gmail. I really don’t know how to use such site. I only knew Facebook messenger, Yahoo messenger and hangout as a chat room.

2. Sign in

The usual email address and password for sign in same with any other social networking sites.

3. Edit profile

Just basic information about you. Same to any other sites requiring information of the user.

4. Update Photo

I still can’t update my photo. I’m always having a difficulty in updating that’s why my picture is still the default one.

5. Chat

Same with Twitter, the use of the ‘@’ symbol. Or you can choose the name in the contacts found on the sidebar for DM(direct message).

My first message conversation was with slackbot. Slackbot is the default user which shows you several tutorials on slack.

6. Chat with everyone

Slack offers a unique feature towards its members/ users, when you want to chat with everybody, you can just use ‘@group’ or @everyone’. It’s like a GM on SMS. Everybody in the group will be notified of the message. It’s really a cool feature for me.

7. Upload and share files

You can also upload files and share it in the chat room. It can also have an access to your Google drive. You can send and share any file format in the chatbox.

8. Contribute

This is the first time I've encountered this feature. You can contribute to your teams chat box. As we all know emojis are so useful in expressing ourselves. Now in the feature of slack you can add emojis which are really helpful in your group.

9. Edit interface preference

You can edit on how you like your interface to be. Change the background and the emoticons to be used. You can also enable notifications so everytime someone mentioned you, you will automatically be notified without opening a new tab to read the message.

10. Sign out

Findings

First issue: Changing the photo seems a pain. Every time I tried to update my photo I will always get stuck on the cropping part. I don’t know if it is because of the slow internet connection or it is just not user friendly.

Suggestion:

Show tutorials on first log in to inform newbies on how to use Slack.