Design to Increase Networking via LinkedIn App
improving flows for users to interact with their existing connections
Client: LinkedIn (mock client)
Industry: Social Media, Networking
Project Type: Mobile app feature design
Duration: 2 Weeks
LinkedIn is a professional social networking site and mobile app with over 500 million members. LinkedIn’s goal is to be the primary site for networking, job searching, and career growth. LinkedIn has found that user networking has been more prominent on other sites than LinkedIn, so we're here to help keep users on the LinkedIn app!
CHALLENGE
We were tasked with designing additional features to increase user engagement and networking via the LinkedIn App.
USER PROBLEM
People usually use LinkedIn as a storage site for their resume and a source for their job searching. From account creation to the job search, users’ engagement becomes less active on LinkedIn.
SOLUTION
We designed two additional features to increase engagement between LinkedIn connections as well as increase networking via industry event attendance.
My Role
As the principal UX designer with additional specification on content strategy and visual design, I worked closely with the research and visual design teams with constant focus on the user testing and feedback.
DESIGN PROCESS: RESEARCH
We conducted user interviews, competitive analysis, journey mapping, affinity mapping, and empathy mapping to find common themes among users. Users find LinkedIn to be an inorganic platform for relationships, and they prefer to interact with people or search for events elsewhere (ie. Facebook, Eventbrite, Meetup). Essentially LinkedIn has become a professional social media site without the “social” aspects.
Affinity Mapping
After conducting affinity mapping to distill common themes within user interviews and surveys.
Competitive Analysis
Eventbrite - Easy platform to search nearby events in different industries.
Facebook - Users appreciated the relationship banner that describes the interactions they have with their connections.
Meetup - Easy platform to search informal and industry events.
Persona
We developed an user persona to reference our designs and usability testing screening.
DESIGN PROCESS: IDEATION
Promoting attendance at career-building events and interaction with connections via profiles
So we started designing a clear pathway for users to join and invite others to industry events. This feature draws users from Eventbrite and Facebook to LinkedIn for career building activities. An additional feature is the call to action button for physical meetups (ie. coffee dates, Skype calls, etc.) to encourage users to stay engaged with their existing connections.
These features will increase symbiotic and organic relationships between professional connections. LinkedIn will see an increase of at least 10% in user engagement as “quality over quantity” interactions will help users better job search or grow their careers through their existing LinkedIn connections.
Low Fidelity Sketches
Low fidelity wireframes of our app features, prepped to undergo usability testing.
Site Map
We developed a site map to define where our features would be placed on the app.
User Flow
We verified the user flow to utilize our 1) Events page 2) Invite page 3) Profile page and 4) Meetup page for usability testing.
Usability Testing
We conducted over 5 usability tests with our target user to define any design flaws.
MAJOR ITERATIONS
1. Replacing our MAP icon to a CALENDAR icon to represent the pathway to the events page.
2. Creating a larger button to RSVP to the industry event so that users do not overlook it.
3. Ping the event invitation as well as the meetup invitation in both the direct messages and My Network page.
4. Remove from the banner "Weak, Moderate, Strong" relationship aspect since it was unclear and useless to users. Instead we emphasized what users preferred: suggestions to meet up or interact with the existing connection.
5. Changed on the My Network page to "Reconnect" rather than "Connect" to emphasize interactions with existing connections (quality > quantity).
DESIGN PROCESS: DELIVERABLES
Key research findings, persona, low fidelity wireframes, high fidelity wireframes, prototype
We focused the design on 1) a clear pathway for users to join and invite others to industry events and 2) informational content that encourages users to reconnect with their existing connections.
Tools: Sketch3, Invision App, LinkedIn Styleguide
Results + reflections
Finding the best location for the Events icon in the app is still under development. We would need to prioritize how to design the global top navigation bar based upon the client’s priorities and usability testing.
Bringing users into the process at each milestone helped us iterate a better pathway for our features. We would need to develop an algorithm that would best present two users’ (connections) relationship timeline and suggestions for networking with each other.