Slack · Product sense · Mid · 45 to 60 minutes

Reduce notification confusion in Slack

Slack is a workplace messaging app where teams communicate in channels, direct messages, and shared workspaces. Answer this product management case and get it graded line by line against a weighted rubric.

Product sense
Systems thinking
Prioritization
User empathy
Execution planning

The situation

You are the PM for notifications at Slack. Customer Experience leaders and the Messaging org ask you for a product plan after notification issues become one of the top three drivers of support tickets and a recurring complaint in user research. People say Slack feels noisy, but the team has learned the problem is not only message volume. Over time, desktop and mobile developed different settings, the same labels can mean different things across clients, some preferences are tightly coupled, and settings do not always sync reliably. Power users can eventually tune things, but many users do not trust that changing a setting will do what they expect. You need to recommend how Slack should improve notification control in a core experience used across devices by millions of people. Why now: confusion is creating user frustration, extra support cost, and product debt in a high trust area. The tension is that notifications are mission critical, so a bad change could make people miss important messages, create even more noise, or trigger hard to reverse migration bugs.

What to produce

Write a 1 to 2 page product strategy memo.

Your answer must

Define the core problem and explain why the main issue is or is not notification volume versus predictability and control.
Identify at least two important user segments or use cases, including multi-device users and people who want advanced control.
Recommend a product approach for notification settings across desktop and mobile, including the user facing model, the key UX principles, and what you would simplify or preserve.
Explain the main trade-offs, including simplicity versus flexibility, global consistency versus client specific control, and short term patching versus deeper system changes.
Outline a rollout and migration plan that protects current users, handles legacy preferences safely, and includes rollback thinking.
Propose success metrics and guardrails using product behavior, support signals, and trust indicators.

Constraints

The solution must work across desktop and mobile, where legacy behavior and settings differ today.
You cannot assume users will willingly reconfigure all notification preferences from scratch.
Changes in defaults or migration logic must not create ambiguous behavior that causes people to miss important mentions or direct messages.
You should preserve a path for advanced users without making the default experience harder to understand.

Format

Use sections for problem, users, proposal, trade-offs, rollout, and metrics.

How Slack actually played it

Notification overload was among the top three drivers of support tickets, so Slack rebuilt its notification system around clarity and calm. The post diagnoses four conflicting mental models and hidden coupling between preferences in the legacy design. A strong case of fixing a core experience by simplifying the model users hold.

Support ticket drivers point to product debt.
Conflicting mental models are a design bug.
Simplify settings so behavior is predictable.

Built from How Slack Rebuilt Notifications by Slack Engineering.