Even a tool that is awesome like Slack can have bad UX sometimes. Here is a perfect example. Try to make a new channel and you get this dialog

Notice the error in yellow and the text underneath. After typing in my channel name, I pressed submit and nothing happened. I didn’t notice the italic/bold yellow verbose text or the tiny note in gray underneath.

I don’t think the right answer is to let the user type in spaces or capital letters. There are reasons this would cause problems later in the app.

However, a better option is to not let the user type in incorrect values at all. This is super trivial programming. If they type in “FOO” just enter the value as “foo”. If they enter a space, either ignore it or add a dash instead. Why bother with a stupid error message when the field could have been smarter?

When this happened I got angry and thought the app was acting like an asshole. I was like, “Come on dick, you know what I meant. Don’t make me lowercase the fucking letters. God damn it.”

People hate the little things and love the little things. Make your app friendly. Make it anticipate the users needs. Be a friendly and competent assistant. Don’t be an asshole.

Slack, I love your app. Most of the time, you are awesome. Just this one thing. You can take it. Much love.