LinkedIn Meet Up
Extended LinkedIn that streamlines the process for users to send personal invites to their connections in DMs.
My RoleUX Designer (User Researching, Predominantly on UX/UI designs, Product Testing)
TeamAmaya Mali, Andrew Nguyen, Michelle Wan (Designers)
Timeline3 months (Fall 2020)
Understanding the Problem
LinkedIn has been a popular platform used for professional networking and finding opportunities, yet it can be quite intimidating for inexperienced job-seekers to know exactly how to navigate through the job hunting process without feeling overwhelmed. Oftentimes, they might connect with people in their aspiring fields and comes off as desperate by overselling themselves, only to end up in a discouraging lack of response. From there, they're stuck on what to do next.
“I’m not getting any responses on my job applications! What am I doing wrong?”
- a graduating university seniorThe Solution
My team and I extended LinkedIn's messaging features to provide job-seekers in the tech industry a simple way to connect with other field experts for professional advice and mentorship.
User Research + Needfinding
In order to learn more about current habits and issues on LinkedIn, we conducted user research by direct observing and interviewing three LinkedIn users. We kept several questions in mind:
How are job-seekers & recruiters currently interacting with their connections on LinkedIn?
Why do job-seekers & recruiters go on this specific platform?
After analyzing 3 interviews and 52 survey participants, we created three personas to help empathize with our audience throughout our design process.
We also looked into other job-hunting platforms to compare existing features:
Main Insights
Ineffective CommunicationAlthough adding other members on LinkedIn is straightforward, many users find it difficult to know what their connections are looking for.
Lack of Personalized ResourcesMany users have to filter out overwhelming information on their newsfeed. Specific skill development workshops and events are difficult to find on LinkedIn.
Attacking Pain Points with UX Flows
After delving into our audience’s thought process to better understand their current habits, my team and I brainstormed two user experience flows that attack the issues we found from different angles.
Flow 1: Focused on improving one-to-one connections.
Flow 2: Focused on improving group features.
An overarching chart of both UX flows.
A/B User Testing
Our goal is to gain feedback on whether our ideas would help benefit the users. In order to determine which direction to proceed with, we tested several college students using the Wizard of Oz testing method to quickly simulate the interaction on an actual app. Throughout the process, we gave them tasks to achieve and observed their actions.
To prevent order biases, we switched the order of testing each prototype for every tester. The wireframe that focuses on improving personal skill-development accessibility is shown below.
Meanwhile, we also tested another flow that focuses on improving communication with individual connections. The wireframe is shown below.
Sender’s POV when sending an invitation
Receiver’s POV when accepting or declining
Based on our user testings, most testers felt that it was more effective and beneficial for them to gain personalized guidance and stronger connections on LinkedIn as opposed to better accessibility to skill development by joining communities.
Branding Guidelines
As we refined the design, I looked into LinkedIn branding guidelines and matched its visuals to maintain UI consistency.
Design Iterations
Before
After
Improved UI
Redesigned the invitation box component to create a stronger information hierarchy.
Reworded response choices to clarify accepting a request.
Before
After
Receiver’s Responses
Added options to ignore or decline a request with an error prevention message. This allows more user control and helps prevent invitation spamming.
Utilizing Icons for Step-by-Step Visualization
Our testers generally spent a long time filling out the meet-up request form and often felt overwhelmed by the amount of text presented at once. By redesigning and breaking down relevant information into more digestible steps, users naturally filled out the form faster.
Original design with drop-downs
Revised design with icons
Final Comps
Our team extended LinkedIn by adding a meet-up button to the direct messaging features for people like Mr. Albert, Audrey Girl, and Nathen Boy to be able to connect proactively to achieve their individual goals. We were able to pitch our feature to a room of 100 people!
Reflection
Overall, I really enjoyed being able to relate with others about the process of networking and helping each other gain some sense of direction or clarity in their job hunting. The process of inviting a person to meet up is scary and overwhelming for many people. But the step-by-step process with categorizations really helped simplify choices and make the initial conversations a bit less scary for new job-seekers. Note that our team also noticed that there were some design discrepancies for iOS and Android so my team and I focused on redesigned LinkedIn for Android.
In the future, we hope to design a better search system for finding mentorship based on location to meet up conveniently. We also want to establish a clear mentorship system so that users can know which of their connections are open to becoming a mentor. However, we do understand that there could be potential awkward and dangerous concerns about meeting with strangers. We will need to cover more scenarios for security after users accept the invitation.
It was an amazing and fun experience working with Amaya Mali and Andrew Nguyen!
