The cost of workplace chat

Imperfect notes on workplace chat interfaces

Both Slack and Microsoft Teams reshape our attention through a system of product affordances, team norms, and social incentives that make availability an obligation. This sucks for a lot of reasons but it is especially bad when it comes to the attrition on attention and focus.

Slack is more effective in driving emotional engagement (people do be loving Slack), whereas Microsoft wins through bundling as part of the Office suite. Kinda like the Coke/Pepsi neuro marketing test where there is an emotional attachment and bond to Coca Cola, that wasn’t seen when testing Pepsi.

I’d argue that the #BadDesign of Teams is actually an asset when trying to get work done, and although I wouldn’t go as far to say that Slack ruined work, I do think chat interfaces are problematic and haven’t succeeded when it comes to being email killers. Now, we have to check multiple places, and understand different communication preferences to be understood or heard.

When a tool lets us down, we tend to assume we're the problem. Anyone who's watched someone struggle through a "simple" task in a usability test knows the feeling and one of the reasons I hate the term user testing. Oddly, we drop that scrutiny entirely when it comes to the chat tools we use every day at work.

Chat is good at a handful of jobs, especially helpful in a remote setting where you can’t just desk drop a colleague (one of my fav activities in the office). You can get an answer fast, share a bit of context, and stay connected. The problem starts when chat becomes the default for everything at work. It all feels fast, but constantly switching and checking can quickly become a job in itself. When this happens, the real work, what you were hired for, loses out.

This is a design issue and not one that can be solved with willpower alone. Notifications in themselves are a dark pattern made to interrupt and chat interfaces all have 3 big problems in my view.

• Channel sprawl quickly erases relevance when working with others.

• The systems themselves don’t express priority well.

• When urgent and trivial updates look identical, constantly checking becomes a rational act.

At the same time we moralise about compulsive checking, advise people to set statuses and other strategies, but much of this is compensating for weak signal design.

A lot of chat is also performance. Someone who replies to you fast is seen to be present and on top of things. People who respond slowly can be judged to be disengaged and inconsiderate. Additionally the costs land unevenly. Interruption suits managers and support roles who expect their attention to be taken, but affects people who’s job is tied directly to focus.

Typing indicators, unread badges, read states, and reactions have redefined what responsiveness means and locked us into a holding pattern of business and engagement. Individual contributors and new joiners pay the toll disproportionately which over time accrues as communication debt. Decisions and rationale get lost inside threads and retrieval becomes a chore to retrieve.