Ethan Eismann is VP of Design at Slack, where he leads design across the organization. In early 2020, with Slack at 12 million daily active users, Ethan’s team was faced with the complex task of giving the product a complete redesign. Slack’s user interface had grown in multiple directions since its initial launch in 2013, so Ethan knew his team needed to simplify, incorporate feedback from Slack customers and flex their iterative design muscle.

Since 2013, Slack has seen rapid user growth and great adoption, reporting 9,000 new customers in Q1 of 2020 alone, up from 5,000 in previous quarters. Though high growth has been a trend for Slack since it hit the market, the app had never been fully redesigned before 2020. The team had previously tried and failed to pull off a complete product redesign. To move the project forward successfully, Ethan and his design team worked closely with CEO Stewart Butterfield and dozens of beta customers to redesign the app’s core experience and drive user engagement.

In this talk, learn how Ethan approached the redesign by establishing a set of guiding principles, gathering a multidisciplinary team, and collaborating closely with customers to establish a rapid feedback loop. You’ll learn how driving engagement through design can impact business results and how prototyping and keeping customers deeply involved in the design process can help you design meaningful changes in the product experience.