LinkedIn Creatives
Case Study
Transforming LinkedIn Into a Canvas for Everyone
I worked collaboratively with a team of UX/UI designers in pursuit of improving LinkedIn’s current approach of displaying their users’ professional history and qualifications functionalities. In this case study, we examined and then challenged LinkedIn's existing features and functionality, particularly focusing on its effectiveness in empowering users to showcase their professional work and experience. Our Goal was to enhance the platform's capabilities through thorough user research and comparative analysis.
Team |
Iris Verduzco | Dezy Hayes | Matthew Pawlewicz | Nicole Nguyen
Timeframe |
3 week Sprint
My Role |
UX/UI Designer
Programs Used |
Figma, FigJam, Procreate
Scenario: LinkedIn Creatives |
LinkedIn is a professional networking platform that offers its users the ability to create profiles resembling their work experiences, skills, and accomplishments. This platform serves as a hub for networking, job searching, and professional development, connecting millions of users worldwide across various industries. But is LinkedIn as a platform truly successful with its approach to showcasing works other than experience and resumes? Besides those in the creatives or industries that thrive from showcasing their professional portfolios in the non-traditional approach, how can our team improve this aspect of LinkedIn?
Design Problem |
How might we…
Design additional features that allow users to customize their creative content.
Facilitate capturing concise and clear profile/portfolio requirements to display desired projects for their target audience.
Create a space for users to make meaningful connections to aid in furthering their professional pursuits.
Target Audience |
Professionals, Students, and Recent Graduates, those in various industries and businesses
Design Solution |
Our team worked alongside one another to develop a feature within LinkedIn to improve their approach to showcasing professionals from all backgrounds and industries with unique and amazing portfolios. We have come to the system of implementing more customizable features within the editing process of users’ LinkedIn profiles. We also improved LinkedIn’s overall platform layout by shifting more important features into view and blowing up the scale of the sections granted. Our designed vision of LinkedIn is intentional and modernized to be open up to industries other than the professional sphere.
Try out the New and Improved LinkedIn for yourself!
Design Process |
Discovery [ User Research | Competitive & Comparative Analysis - Heuristic Analysis of Current LinkedIn Platform ]
Define [ User Persona ( target audience(s) ) ]
Ideate [ Initial Ideas | Task Flows | Information Architecture ]
Design [ Typography | Design Consistency | Low-Fi Wireframes | Mid-Fi Wireframes | Hi-Fi Wireframes | Final Screens ]
Insights [ Challenges | Learnings | Findings | Reflection | Next Steps (phase 2) ]
Discovery
Discovery
User Research |
While our team did know what our primary group was to research (creative professionals | those in the creative industries ), we still would like to hold onto the consideration of those in other professional fields. Specifically, fields that also have professional portfolios that are not creatively bounded. [ i.e. tech | Wellness | Education | Marketing & Advertising | etc. ].
Intensely trying to find the purpose
Competitive & Comparative Analysis -
Heuristic Analysis of Current LinkedIn Platform |
Before our team even thought of the amazing idea of imputing such world-breaking customization features into a site such as LinkedIn, we needed to pinpoint the specific areas for improvement within LinkedIn's platform, particularly focusing on the profile page. Each designer would do their research in finding strengths and weaknesses on the primary site [ LinkedIn ], a competitive site [ any sort of professional job seeking platform ], and a comparative site [ any creative | professional portfolio site ].
We took major reference from website builder platforms as well as some professional portfolio sites
User Interviews |
Our team had the pleasure of interviewing a total of 6 people for our research.
6 Users who are fairly familiar with LinkedIn
Insights |
When sorting stickies in our affinity map for patterns, here are some shared main concerns and statements that were presented to us.
Define
Define
User Persona |
When sorting out our stickies in our affinity map, here we were able to take in various patterns and implemented it into our user persona Morgan!
Ideate
Ideate
Task Flow Development |
Standard Project Task Flow [this was used as a guide for features to be prototyped in early stages ]
Finalized Task flow
Design
Design
Sketches |
Everyone on the team’s sketches were considered during the ideation process of lo-fi wireframe sketches
And we continued to ideate on various components and certain features we would like to keep | move to the chopping block
Lo-Fi Wireframes |
Throughout the initial stages of developing LinkedIn creatives’ designs, the process was divided into individual pages assigned to each designer. Still withholding the overall branding of LinkedIn’s platform style, we brought into consideration in what features should be prioritized and how we filled in the volume of white space LinkedIn had intentionally left.
Hi-Fi Wireframes |
Our team collaboratively worked on inputting content into our fully fleshed-out Hi-Fis. It’s almost uncanny to the actual site, but with major tweaks that have the intention with enhancing user functionality and enjoyment.
Insights
Insights
Challenges |
Spacing out certain tasks was difficult since we wanted each designer to have an impact on every sequence of the design development |
Learnings |
There will be opportunities as there are with sacrifices, and with a time crunch at hand, there are tons of these!
Next Steps (phase 2) |
with the editing feature implemented, what are certain components that could be further developed to enhance profile customization?
