Any other aspies have trouble using the Web service Slack?

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Back when I was working in IT, my company jumped on the Web service Slack to "facilitate communications" in the department. (Having no smartphone, I was accessing Slack in a Web browser on my computers.) Up to this point, I'd ridden more than 30 years of changes in computer technologies, and had no particular trouble with any of them. But I hit a wall with Slack: I just couldn't use it!

I just could not make any sense of all the snippets of statements flying around among about a half dozen users at once, with another dozen or so inserting occasional comments. I could not follow what they were saying to each other, and I couldn't pick out when they were talking to me. When someone made a direct reference to me, I could not pick up the context of what they meant; there just wasn't enough information attached. I'd never felt like I was drowning in a new technology before.

I worked on this challenge for months, and never made any progress. Am I alone in this, or has anyone else hit this same wall? If so, did you find a solution, and what helped? I really hate discovering something I can't do.

Slack (particularly the mobile view on phones and tablets) doesn't lend itself to the way I communicate. While I've had to get used to it (and discord) I can't say I like the UI/UX. So yes, I sympathize very much. I do find it a bit easier on a wide-screen monitor than on a phone though.

I just now came across this thread rather belatedly.

Is there anyone currently here who has the difficulties described by the OP?

I'm wondering because:

1) I use text-based chat for my support groups (when we're not meeting in-person).

2) My partner and I are considering developing a chat system of our own, due to our own frustrations with the currently-existing chat platforms (e.g. Discord and the one we're currently using, Zulip).

The difficulty described by the OP sounds a lot like the difficulties many autistic people, including myself, have with in-person group conversations that are too big and too unstructured. But, personally, I find unstructured multi-person text-based conversations a whole lot easier to follow than unstructured multi-person in-person conversations.

But this thread has reminded me that not all autistic people are like me in this regard. And this, in turn, is making me wonder if there's some way that an online text-based chat platform could accommodate people with the difficulty described by the O.P.

I'm considering giving my chat platform three levels of channels/threads (within a given organization's account on the system): (1) group, (2) meeting, and (3) topic.

People could then choose to view the messages in (1) one topic at a time, or (2) all the topics in one meeting at a time, or (3) all the topics in the current meetings of all groups that the individual member is subscribed to.

Discord has just one level of organization (within each Discord server). If I recall correctly, Slack has just one level of organization too. Zulip has two levels, "stream" and "topic." In Zulip, "streams" are the equivalent of "groups" in my proposed system (the things individual members can choose to subscribe to). I've also been using Zulip "topics" (threads) as the equivalent of "meetings" in my proposed new system. What I'm wondering is whether a third level of organization below that would be helpful, at least if we can make the UI sufficiently easy to use.

I have trouble with "in-person group conversations that are too big and too unstructured" only in the sense of parties; in meetings with a leader, convener, or moderator, I do fine.

Responding to your proposed new chat platform: Offering multiple ways of interacting with the text is essential for us neurodivergent types. For me, option (3) sounds like hell (sorry, but that's the feeling it invokes in me--everyone shouting over everyone else in a gymnasium, I just want to run away). Option (2) sounds like Slack, in the way our IT department was using it. I believe Slack did offer a "topic" option, but no one was using it, because it was an obscure feature and too disruptive. Only option (1) has any appeal for me, and that depends on what other preferences are available.

In thinking about this, I realized that a big part of my problem was visual distraction: multiple other people's comments popping in over each other, or while I was composing my comment. So one preference I'd like is to lock out other comments appearing while one comment is being composed, the written equivalent to "one person speaks at a time" or a talking stick. (Maybe even a preference that displays only one comment at a time, requiring me to press a key to see the next.)

I'd also like to place a visual cue in the stream where I left off reading. An example: I read part of the screen, and now I'm composing a reply. I'd like to see a colored line in the screen where I stopped reading, even if I need to press a key to make it appear, before or during typing my reply. In effect, a visual bookmark that helps me find my place again. (I've wished for an equivalent "pause" button in some meetings

It would also be useful if the OP could have "ownership" of the thread. Maybe it would be enough just to highlight the OP's name or comments differently so that it sounds like some moderator is controlling the discussion. It would also help if it were easy for anyone to split off into a new topic, something like, "@Dave, why don't you break off the hardware choice into a new topic", with a link for @Dave to start the new topic in a new window and links for anyone else to follow him there when he does. And a backlink in the new topic back to the original thread. I don't know exactly how this should look, but it should be easy, one obvious click or one keystroke for each action.

Note my use of the term "window". Apps designed for phones assume the app controls the whole screen. Older applications designed for computers assumed the app window was only one among many. (There's a reason I use a computer instead of a phone, and not just for font size.) Both visual presentations need to work well.

BTW, I hate depending on vague visual cues in the UI for actions I can take. ("If a word is purple and you click on it, then ..., but if you option-click on it, then instead ...") I want keystroke alternatives for every action, and an easy-to-find popup help page of those keystrokes.

All of these are suggestions that would help only me; I'd expect other people to want things to work differently. So all of these should be personal preferences, stored on the server so they follow the user (at login). That's the only kind of "following" I'm interested in.