An exercise in how guides and overlays can improve the user experience in Slack.
To further explore my understanding of the topics I’ve read in About Face, my mentor suggested taking a stab at a design exercise implementing guides and overlays to help users understand an aspect of a product.
Make the option to add new team members more obvious
On the primary slack interface, there is one obvious option for adding team members. However, the placement of the action can cause confusion of what the function actually does.
To solve this, I suggest moving the “Invite people” link in the left panel to it’s own section below Apps for a clearer understanding that adding new members can be done at the group level rather than specifically as a direct message contact. In addition, I’ve added a tooltip for context to where new team members will be added.
Make help more accessible
For users who don’t initially know how to access a feature, there should be an easily accessible help function. On the current version of the application, help is somewhat hidden in an upper right hand menu.
My suggestion is to add a help button at the bottom of the left panel. This not only keeps the button static and always accessible, but utilizes a space that can spare the few extra pixels to keep from clutter elsewhere.
Create a help overlay that has multiple ways of guiding new users to the tool.
I wanted to use an overlay some how to make the help feature more useful. Feature considerations include
