Explore smaller avatars in room list

[nadonomy]

Design hunch: Size of avatars & visual rhythm of room list make it harder to scan and use. Explore visually, looking for simple actionable tweaks.

[SimonBrandner]

I feel like a group of users would call making the room avatars smaller a regression (there might even be an issue about it). But personally, I think that the avatars might not even need to be there in some cases as spaces become more prominent. Discord has no channel avatars and it seems to work fine

[niquewoodhouse]

@nadonomy I would be interested in hearing the product take on that point

Discord has no channel avatars and it seems to work fine

Slack and Microsoft Teams have no channel avatars either. When the room list was rebuilt last year there was a debate on whether avatars were needed for this, and the conclusion was avatars are a bit of personality and branding to a room. I just wonder if we still feel that way?

Quill has a mix, with favourites getting a bigger image and everything else being smaller

Going to no avatars might mean a cleaner room list but it might also require further changes - eg how breadcrumbs appear

[niquewoodhouse]

There aren't many quick options as each avatar in the room list needs to be the same size, regardless of whether previews are on or not.

Reducing the avatar to 28px and tweaking some elements is about as far as we can go. It makes the list shorter but does of course remove some of the breathing space.

[germain-gg]

These explorations have happened on Figma