Slack

Salesforce’s productivity platform

Slack is a messaging app for business that connects people to the information they need. By bringing people together to work as one unified team, Slack transforms the way organizations communicate.

  • Company: Slack, Salesforce

  • My role: Senior Product Designer

  • Duration: Nov 2021 - Now

  • Tools used: Figma

Background

I joined Slack on Nov 2021 shortly after Salesforce completed acquisition of Slack, working on Team Expansion - Trials & upgrades, Purchasing experience.


Case study 1: Custom Trial Themes

Goals

The goal for this project is to make it more obvious that your team is on a trial with prominent, top-level trial theming, we will increase trial awareness which will result in more visits to the Paid Benefits page. 

Problems

In the current trial experience, users aren’t always aware they are on a trial, we lose the opportunity to demonstrate the paid benefits for our users to upgrade to a paid plan after trial ends.

First Draft: at the stage I thought through every possible placements we may surface to our users that they’re on a trial. The goal is to consider all use cases and through comparisons we can land on the best solutions. I started with these six placement, considering each placements have different prominence:

  • Adding illustrations to the Entire slack theme (high-level theming) ;

  • Adding a Trial badge to the workspace header;

  • Adding a Trial badge next to Upgrade button in Profile;

  • Adding confetti illo to the top Nav bar;

  • Adding visual indications to the workspace panel;

  • Adding a Trial badge next to workspace header in the Team menu

Got feedbacks from Commitment Team Designers, we figured the surface areas in Profile and Team Menu are still worth exploring. The initial design did not have enough emphasis on Trial themes, since it is already one level beneath, we want to make sure users are paying attention. With that ini mind, I continued explorations, focusing on the layout and the copy.

Here comes my favorite part of the design: visual explorations on theming. I dig into the current Slack brand team illustration library, we want to align with Slack brand style. From the Library, I picked out a couple elements that may work in Trial theming. I explored Celebration themes, Abstract themes, Spaceship themes, Plants themes etc.

After narrowing down placements, and the copy, I landed on these 4 surface areas: Workspace Header, Top Nav Bar, Profile Menu and Team Menu.

The project is design team initiated. We were hoping to bring it to Grooming in Q4. We have got Expansion designers as well as Engineers’s eyes on the project, and I got really positive feedback.

Case study 2: Team Menu Message Counter

Goals

Inform trial team users about the 90 days of messages history and file storage changes in the Team menu.

Background

Starting September 1, 2022, we're simplifying limits for the free plan. Instead of a 10,000-message limit and 5 GB of storage, we're giving full access to the past 90 days of message history and file storage.

Original in Product, designed in 2020

1. Trial Eligible Team:

  • Day 1 -The goal is to communicate 1) free teams have a limit 2) communicate how close they are to reaching this limit

  • Day 2-83
    Visual indicator counting up to 90 days
    Upgrade CTA shown, would never show Trial CTA until day 83

  • Day 83-89 - last week before limit reached
    Switch from “approaching 90 days” counter with Upgrade CTA -> “You’re approaching your limit!” Trial Start CTA

Days 90+: Limit reached, post-limit reached

Day 90+ - goal is now to communicate 1) you’ve reached your limit 2) talk about # of messages hidden
Show trial CTA until ANY trial post-GG is started
If team starts a diff feature trial (Huddles, Slack Connect) change this Trial CTA here -> Upgrade CTA


2. Active Trial Team:

 

3. Trial Ineligible Free Team:

Number of messages