Overview

This project was a design challenge for an interview with LinkedIn. I ended up progressing to the final onsite interview after sending in my final ideas and mocks for this challenge. Unfortunately LinkedIn hit pause on hiring due to COVID-19, but this was regardless a fun project to work on!

ROLE

Product Designer / Interviewee

year / timeline

2020 - 5 days

Design brief—

introduction

“LinkedIn enables professionals to be more productive and successful by helping them stay informed and build meaningful relationships. A productive content ecosystem relies on a healthy balance of content contributors and consumers that share and learn knowledge about their industries, careers and professional interests. For many members, however, it feels scary or risky to contribute to the platform since their actions are tied to their professional identities.”

scope

Please think through the end to end experience and share your thought process, approach, insights, and analysis with us. The final deliverable should be a high-fidelity design comp/comps that demonstrate your interaction and visual design capabilities.

The task

Design an experience that helps novice
contributors overcome the barriers to sharing.

The Final Design—

01

Understanding the Problem—

initial questions

Before beginning, I wanted to take some time to really understand what the problem at hand was. So before doing anything, I posed a few questions…

• How is user contribution and sharing defined?

• What are users currently contributing and sharing?

• What prompts the consumer to cross over to contributor?

• What motivates a user to contribute or share? 

• What is the current contributing and sharing experience?

• What current barriers prevent a user from contributing?

02

Understanding the User—

Research

I sent out a survey to people across various demographics, industries, and roles. I got back 15 responses. I also interviewed three individuals. Finally, I scoured Reddit for additional insight and walked through the current LinkedIn contribution/sharing experience on my own.

synthesis

After collecting the survey and interview responses and Reddit insights, I created an affinity diagram of all of my research. I was able to identify a few key themes which I later used to inform my designs.  

why users don’t contribute

1. They have nothing to contribute.

2. They aren’t engaged enough

3. LinkedIn is a professional platform.

4. It seems superficial to contribute

user paint points

1. Content isn’t very useful

2. No community

3. Not easy to engage

User Persona—

03

Re-framing the Problem—

After my research and synthesis, I decided I needed to reframe the problem. It seemed that there were additional barriers inhibiting users from contributing on LinkedIn, and I wanted to make sure I was addressing these barriers. So I generated some How Might We’s and came up with four overall themes…

• HMW create a more engaging community?

• HMW customize LinkedIn for the user

• HMW create a genuine + productive experience?

• HMW make it easier engage + contribute?

The Fundamental Problem

An Issue of Engagement

I realized that the fundamental problem was actually an issue of engagement, which then resulted in low content creation and sharing. Users weren’t going to LinkedIn to engage. They went to LinkedIn to do something intentional, like look for a job or connect professionally…so how could I create an engaging experience while still keeping to the integrity of what LinkedIn fundamentally
is- a professional platform?

04

Areas for Opportunity—

A framework for engagement

After mapping out different ideas, I created a framework for engagement…

1. Prompt the user
2. Induce curiosity
3. Educate
4. Engage

06

Sketches/Wireframes—

Prompt 1

Prompt 2

Discover Page: Feed

Content Posted

Ask Page

Collab Page

08

Final Concepts—

Habit-Forming Prompts

When Lena opens the LinkedIn app, she’s prompted with the question- what are you looking to do today? This primes Lena with ideas of different things she can explore within the LinkedIn app.

The next prompt Lena’s given is a “Tip of the Day”, which provides her ways to share content. For more ideas she can click on the light bulb icon.

Over time, answering and being exposed to these prompts becomes a habit. Consistent habits trigger engagement, which is the thought behind this concept.

Discover & Create

Prompts answered, Lena is brought to the Discover page, where she can scroll through custom feeds. She can also share content and is prompted by the question “What would you like to share?” in the form field at the top. She can create additional custom feeds by clicking the + symbol at the top right and adding different topics and communities. This way she can scroll through posts that actually interest her.

She clicks onto the “What would you like to share” form. With a new idea in mind thanks to her tip of the day, she makes a short but useful post. Success! It’s always nice to celebrate small accomplishments. Particularly with virtual confetti.

Asking (Anonymous) Questions

Scrolling through her newly created custom feed fueled some questions in Lena’s mind. She feels inspired to ask a question in the Ask section of the homepage. She toggles into the “Career Advice” community forum, a community she often frequents. Clicking into the “Do you have a question” form (another sneaky prompt), she titles and types in her question. To her delight, she can ask anonymously, wiping away her worries of how it may appear on her her public activity. She posts her question. Success! Virtual confetti doesn’t get old.

Collaborate to Engage

Lena heard about the launch of LinkedIn’s newest feature, Collab, and is curious to see what it’s about. She clicks onto the Collab page where she sees that she can create a challenge, explore existing challenges, see what events are going on in the Collab community, as well as access different resources. She scrolls through trending challenges and sees a few she likes. She fills out a short application form and waits for confirmation to
begin collaborating with new friends and
create something great together.

The thought behind the Collab feature was to bring engagement to the next level. During my research I found that people didn’t feel there was a sense of community within LinkedIn. I wanted to create an experience that connected users on a deeper level but still maintained LinkedIn’s professional platform.

Reflections

During this project I had a lot of interesting conversations that helped to spark a lot of ideas. I really enjoyed the nature of interviewing I ended up taking on, which was more or less an exchange of stories and spitballing of ideas.

I also gained insight into a darker side of social media. I observed a large amount of negative comments surrounding LinkedIn’s social environment. It revealed to me the role social comparison can play in our lives. It’s our choice of whether or not it affects us positively or negatively, but if we are more purposeful in creating positively engaging platforms it can make a huge difference in everyone’s lives.