Slack focuses on these three things in order to successfully replace email

One awesome aspect of Slack that helps cement its iconic status is the fact that it’s a beautiful, easy-to-use, well-designed product.

Butterfield hired design agency MetaLab to turn their early prototype into the polished product that we all know and use even to this day.

And while MetaLab founder Andrew Wilkinson didn’t even know that Slack would become popular or grow as fast as it has, he explained that, “[like] a well-built home, great software focuses on giving its users hundreds of small, satisfying interactions.” 🏠

And Slack certainly delivers on that front, through its three core product aspects: search, synchronization and simple file sharing. It just feels well built.

Search — quite similar to Gmail’s approach, Slack understood the value of their product was in helping people find what they’re looking for quickly.

As Butterfield has pointed out in an interview with Fast Company, “People need to feel confident that when they read a document or conversation, they don’t have to worry about labeling or storing it — that they’ll be able to find it again later if and when they need it.” 👍

Synchronization — On synchronization, Butterfield said, “One of the things that drove us nuts about every other internal platform was that it was very difficult to pick up in the same place when you switched devices–say, when you left your laptop and picked something back up on your phone.”

The ability to sync your conversations seamlessly with the desktop and mobile app from the beginning has given Slack the competitive edge — it also knows where every person has left off a conversation, and the product syncs to that position in real time.

If you want to see the gory details of Slack’s notification process, check out the workflow diagram below, which encompasses all the considerations that go into whether to notify a user about a message.

Simple file sharing — Slack is incredibly intuitive in its UI, so it’s natural that they’ve created simple file-sharing options. Slack helps users save time and have a better experience by letting them drag and drop files and paste images directly into the chat.