Slack Hurts Attention, Productivity, Energy
Why Shape Makes A Great Slack Alternative
As somewhat of an introvert, modern Slack usage bewildered me when I joined a big org a few years ago. Slack was easily gameable: if your status bubble was always green, and you were constantly posting messages, it made you look really busy.
Some of this could be sincere. But a sense of politics crept in that let people swap real work with Slack work. Instead of being a tool, Slack became the job.
While Slack is a well-engineered product with good intentions, I believe its design decisions have wrought catastrophic consequences on team productivity and morale.
Shape is a fantastic Slack alternative, not because it does what Slack does and more, but because it does what Slack was meant to do, with less.
More Focus
How did a chat app become the defacto way product teams communicate, analyze, and strategize with each other?
We're not sure either. It's like someone looked at AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) one day and said, "this is how all teams should run their business." Nonsense!
Shape's core primitive is Discussions, not chat. Think of discussions like a marriage between a forum, email, and docs. With chat, it might look awkward if you sent a message that was 2 pages long. "Put it in a doc for goodness' sake!" Not so with Shape.
Shape was designed for deep text and centers around long form content. Discussions can be long and wordy. Replies can be even longer. Bring your essays. Bring your over-thinking mind. Shape welcomes deep thought. In fact, it was designed for it.
Less Noise
You can never quite pop that red badge on the bouncing Slack icon in your dock can you? It's become quite the unhealthy addiction. Every time you go in to scratch that red itch, it lights up again just a few minutes later. It's as if Slack was designed to maximize the number of minutes you spend in it! (I bet you it is.)
Shape was designed to be no less fun than Slack, without the unhealthy addiction or constant calls to bring you back in. Here's how:
Shape uses email notifications, not push notifications.
This lets you take more granular control of notifications at the core level, using your email client's (such as Gmail) filters, rules, and smart routing.
You control how fast things move.
Just like The Sims or SimCity, Shape features a "speed control" front and center that lets you control how fast things move. At 1x, you'll get notified of every new activity the moment it happens. But you can also slow time down. Set your speed to 0.75x to receive a summary email every hour, or 0.5x to receive every 4 hours. Done for the day? Hit pause! You can resume again the next day. When you do, you'll receive a digest of everything you missed.
Notification settings for each channel are front-and-center.
They are not buried in deep and confusing menus. The default notification setting for all channels is "Unmuted" but not "Everything." This means you'll only receive notifications for replies and mentions, or conversations you've explicitly subscribed to. For channels you want to be deeply involved in, you can set your notification level to Everything to receive notifications for any new activity, like a new discussion.
What takes twenty messages in Slack only takes one in Shape.
Because conversations center around discussions, you can't hit enter to submit. Enter creates a new line (muhahahaha). This invites you to add to your thought, and write a longer message, over quick "hey...", "question for you...", "got a sec..." messages, which we honestly find quite rude and disruptive.
We've gotten rid of the worst parts of Slack
Too many people are typing...
Picture this: it's a quite Wednesday morning. You're sipping on a hot cup of coffee, ready to type out what will surely be a transformative idea. Naturally because it's the 21st century you use an instant messenger platform to write your genius idea (sarcasm, in case you missed it). You start typing, quite at peace, when suddenly.
"John Memes is typing..."
Uh, excuse me? I was here first. Ok, no matter, I'll continue with my message.
"John Memes and Chris BackFromVacation are typing..."
Umm. Ok, well, this is starting to get awkward. Should I just send what I have so I shape the conversation around my topic? But it's not ready yet! Why are we using instant messaging for this!??
"7 people are typing..."
WHAT THE !*@#. Ok, well clearly my genius idea will get lost in the noise here. Should I send this as an email? But who uses email anymore?
You get the picture. Instant messaging wasn't designed for this. It's not how teams should do business. It drowns out great ideas and substantive conversation for spur-of-consciousness thoughts and memes.
Amongst the things you'll absolutely love about Shape is: there are no typing indicators. So, go on. Sip your coffee. Type your message in peace.
The Green Bubble
It's 5:30pm. You receive a Slack message, but it's too long to be fully displayed in a push notification. You want to check the message out of curiosity, but you're busy making dinner or spending time with your kids. Now, you can open Slack, but it will temporarily set your status bubble to green. The person who sent you the message will be able to see that you saw their message but rudely did not respond. Awkwardddd.
Alternatively you can put your foot down and be a "always gray bubble" kind of person. Bold choice. A bit counter-cultural, especially when everyone else plays the green bubble game. I mean if your bubble is not green are you even working?
Enough with green bubble madness. Mouse jigglers are useless in Shape. In Shape, you're defined by the depth of your conversation, not by whether your computer happened to go to sleep while you were making a cup of coffee.
There are absolutely no presence indicators in Shape.
So, is Shape a good Slack alternative?
Shape is typing....
YES! Shape is a fantastic Slack alternative, and we're absolutely sure you'll love it. In fact, if you don't find that Shape has transformed your team culture to be more thoughtful and deliberate, we'll refund your last 3 months of use.
Ready to get started?
Ready to escape the chaos?
Join the teams who've already made the switch from Slack to Shape. Experience what it's like to work without constant interruptions, lose fewer ideas to the void, and actually love your team comms.
We're confident you'll love Shape. If not, we'll refund you—no questions asked.
Try free for 30 days
Then, just $5.99/user per month
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