Slack is definitely an experience, if you compare it with something like hipchat.
A few of the small things I've noticed -
- Sounds are just beautiful. The pings and the clings are selected very thoughtfully. Sound is the invisible thing that generally makes a good game, great.
- The slack loading message - there are a bunch of different welcome messages that just bring a smile to your face. And they cycle through it, so you don't see the same message every time.
- The loading animation is just beautiful. I saw an update where all they did was improve the resolution for this icon on retina display
- The channels thing is awesome - it's like the IRCs. They even went ahead and added the "#" even though it's unnecessary.
- The details - the colors chosen, the fonts, even the minimalistic design in general - it's just done very, very nicely.
- The search is just awesome.
You might go "meh" on this, but these are things that the competitors are ignoring. These are things that made me fall in love with Slack when we started using it an year back. Yes administration is simple, yes they have amazing documentation. Yes, they have segmented their users well. But I think the core product is just beautiful, and that gives them a huge leg-up over their competitors even without the other places they are doing well.
I think you would be surprised how much little things matters.
Thats also why not all games are equally addictive even though they are all "experiences".
It's not what but how.
That doesn't mean it's the only reason for it's success but it does have a very open ended architecture with so many customization possibilities that allows it to silence even the most critical technical people.
A few of the small things I've noticed -
- Sounds are just beautiful. The pings and the clings are selected very thoughtfully. Sound is the invisible thing that generally makes a good game, great.
- The slack loading message - there are a bunch of different welcome messages that just bring a smile to your face. And they cycle through it, so you don't see the same message every time.
- The loading animation is just beautiful. I saw an update where all they did was improve the resolution for this icon on retina display
- The channels thing is awesome - it's like the IRCs. They even went ahead and added the "#" even though it's unnecessary.
- The details - the colors chosen, the fonts, even the minimalistic design in general - it's just done very, very nicely.
- The search is just awesome.
You might go "meh" on this, but these are things that the competitors are ignoring. These are things that made me fall in love with Slack when we started using it an year back. Yes administration is simple, yes they have amazing documentation. Yes, they have segmented their users well. But I think the core product is just beautiful, and that gives them a huge leg-up over their competitors even without the other places they are doing well.