LinkedIn 

A redesign

Role: Researcher, Designer,

Project duration: Jul 2020 - Sep 2020

Project Overview

User Experience design & Branding

LinkedIn is an online platform that connects the world's professionals. ... A complete LinkedIn profile will summarize your professional experience to your connections, current and future employers, and recruiters. Through your profile, you can showcase your professional life, milestones, skills and interests.

Problems 

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1. The profile page and job page is too cluttered and filled with information they don’t need.

2. Inconsistency with job and people recommendations that match their profile.

3. Companies do not provide enough data to inform applicants of their application status and relevant data to compare against others.

4. The job app doesn’t work, leaves mobile users frustrated.

5. Improve Job filters to decrease the search time.

6. White background strains vision with no option for a dark theme mode.

7. No way of tracking an application once it's submitted.

Insights

People want a better job search tool that connects them to others and improves their job searching.

The Challenge

I am an avid user of LinkedIn. I use their services to keep up with my connections, job searches and gauge the pulse of user-experience. Likewise, Job applicants are increasingly turning to LinkedIn for their job search, so much so that it is supplanting traditional job search tools in many ways. Despite this widespread usage. However, as a UX-designer, I have noticed some flaws (though not many) in the LinkedIn platform. I am interested in a deeper dive into their design by proposing innovative solutions to improve the job search and job application experience.

The Opportunity

The Process

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The Process

Discovery:

Research & Analysis

I wanted to learn more about how people use LinkedIn:

• What they value about the service.

• How search behaviors change due to time constraints/user needs.

• How do they prioritize their job searches based on fit.

I have conducted phone, in-person interviews and sent out surveys to 80 participants who met the following criteria:

• Users who only use LinkedIn for job searches (Job board).

• Users who use LinkedIn as a social media. share content, promote their brand, network/connect with others.

• Users who only update their profile on occasion.

• Users who are actively reaching out to job posters for job opportunities.

• Users who only have an account to follow company.

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Research Insights

Affinity Mapping

After analyzing insights and creating the user personas, I needed to prioritize my ideas when approaching the issue. I created a prioritization matrix with the following parameters: Value and Complexity Due to time constraints, I decided to only iterate on the features that added the most value to the app, indicated by the teal post-its.

Key Research Findings

User Personas

Define

To brainstorm features for the product roadmap, I created "How Might We" and "Point of View" Statements using insight from my research and Kyleigh and Vance’s  empathy map.

Feature Prioritization

After analyzing insights and creating the user personas, I needed to prioritize my ideas when approaching the issue. I created a prioritization matrix with the following parameters: Value and Complexity Due to time constraints, I decided to only iterate on the features that added the most value to the app, indicated by the teal post-its.

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Desktop Map

After getting a much better idea of what features I wanted to include in the app and drawing from UI structures of similar functioning apps, I created an app map to illustrate all possible user interaction points. I’ve broken up the app's architecture into 3 distinct functions, in which the application navigation can be broken down into Job Dashboard, Overview, Contact Job Poster, Your Competition, Track your Application.

1. Login
2. Profile Page

3. Application Navigation:

   1. ​Job Dashboard

   2. Overview

   3. Contact Job Poster

   4. Your Competition

   5. Track your Application

Mobile Map

1. Same process with the app, but I only focused on the post page and recommended jobs: 

   1. Login

   2. Profile Page

   3. Post

   4. Recommended Jobs:

   5. Job Post

Develop: 

Prototyping

Low Fidelity Wireframe Iterations

​With my user stories and flows in place, I can begin sketching with paper then creating wireframes for user testing.

Wireframes

Test: Validation, Usability, Feedback

I conducted remote usability tests with 10 users through lookback.io. and received direct feedback from users as they walked through their interaction with the app. With their feedback, I iterated on my high-fidelity prototype to rethink the user flow for the job "apply now" feature to improve the app's overall accessibility.

https://lookback.io/watch/YGazD54trkbDxVDjs

User Research A/B Testing

When the High fidelity wireframes were done, I was able to test them with a few people to collect some more feedback. Most of the comments were about how it may be confusing to add a document so, I made some last changes to the visual design below.

The initial home page had a lot of icons. There were many universal icons on the home page, which often leads to better navigation and a couple of lines with a bulleted list. That’s pretty standard, but it wasn’t giving us the results we wanted.

The second variation reduced the copy significantly. Additionally, the call to action (CTA) changed from “Enter” to “log in” and “Join” to “Sign up.” A couple of other changes, including the image and color scheme, rounded out the differences between the control and eventual winner.

Simply cleaning up the copy and changing the picture led to a 66.67 percent increase in conversion rate. After changing the button style, text, and removing a few icons by replacing them with the text, we experienced a boost in internet traffic.

This is another example of incredible results from user feedback. We wanted to improve the user experience and did so admirably by slimming down the copy and changing a few aesthetic details. This research report includes how we conducted our research, the results we found, and a brief list of recommended changes.

Design:

Iteration

INTERACTION FEEDBACK
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A common observation that I received from user testing was that some of the app's interactions did not have enough feedback to indicate whether a desired action was performed or not. Therefore, for the Easy Apply Feature, I added pop up screens to give a visual cue that their application has been successfully submitted.

INTERACTION FEEDBACK

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Another theme that was brought up was accessibility. users suggested a dark mode option for ease of eye strain.

UI Style Guides

High - Fidelity Prototype

Made by Figma

Dark theme concept

 Product Features 

Updated Job Dashboard with my recent

activities tracker. 

 Gain Insights and track application performance

Learn how your application ranks with a complete analysis in real time and see how your applications are performing across all companies. 

For Web prototype click HERE

For Mobile prototype click HERE

Easy Job Searching

With a new job, search app users have the opportunity to apply for recommended roles with one click of a button.
No more sitting behind a laptop; your next gig is right underneath your fingertips.

What I've Learned

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This project taught me how to translate user needs and pain points in their job searching process into meaningful user flows in a mobile app and web format. I explored rapid prototyping to create realistic solutions that kept the user in mind throughout each iteration. The nuances of incorporating an engaging UI scheme and micro-interactions to my final deliverable gave a new perspective for evaluating the details to create a holistic user experience.

Future Considerations

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I would improve on tailoring the Job dashboard to add more features job prospects need. I received a few comments from users that they loved the new layout but would like to see additional features such as interview insights, employee reviews, and company demographics around race. Since the app is in its early phases of design, I would need to communicate with engineers to understand the practicality of implementing this function and arranging information based on what other companies’ statics are released to the public.

I would improve the UI of the app. I have only implemented one color palette and typography style that encompassed a clean and straightforward feel that I wanted the app to portray. It would be very beneficial to create another UI that could be trendy and customizable and streamlined to increase the app's accessibility and focus on each feature's content. From there, I would conduct another round of A/B testing session to gauge the user opinion on which UI scheme was superior.