UI/UX case study
Linkedin Redesign
UI/UX redesign of Linkedin’s search feature to improve navigation and visibility of different categories
Introduction
LinkedIn is used by many professionals as a popular networking tool/social media platform and is great for career development in any field. Its features have lots of variability and there are many functions for hyper specific actions. However, with an abundance of options, it can create confusion and difficulty for users, especially new users, to navigate the app.
User Interviews
Four individuals are interviewed and had them running through a series of user tests in the current LinkedIn mobile application.
After the initial user testing round, a conclusion were made. When attempting to complete more complex tasks that were not common, such as searching for specific courses on LinkedIn, the users were often confused and frustrated. This was due to a flaw in the design of the search function in the LinkedIn application. The only way users were able to look at LinkedIn Learning courses was by searching blindly in the search bar, then using various filters to get closer to their target.
Problem
The main component that caused our users issues was the search function featured on the homepage of the LinkedIn mobile application. Users had a lot of difficulty trying to reach the “Courses” section of LinkedIn. The majority of the users we tested resorted to simply searching for the term they were looking for, as seen below. Despite this, the results they were looking for were not displayed, but instead other posts and articles on LinkedIn that did not pertain to the subject at hand.
How might we improve navigation to increase visibility of different categories in LinkedIn?
Trying to search for ‘Excel’ brings up companies and jobs as suggestions, unhelpful for finding courses.
A query for ‘Excel spreadsheet course’ only brings up unrelated posts.
Only after selecting various filters hidden from sight can we narrow our search down to just courses, finally arriving at our target search.
Goal
Boost the visibility and improve the navigation of Linkedin features by reducing user roadblocks and time in takes to reach Linkedin features
KPI: The amount of time it takes to complete a task of finding and using a Linkedin feature
Competitive Analysis
We looked at how other mobile applications handle the problem of sorting searches into many categories for competitive analysis.
Uber Eats' Browse categories feature
Yelp's search and categories filter
Door Dash's top categories bar
Prototype Exploration
Prototype & Flow
We found that when prompting users to look for Linkedin learning/courses they immediately try to find a corresponding button. Another thing we notice is many of the categories in Linkedin are not very visible to the user as those categories lack their own sections and were relegated as search filters.
If the user had no previous knowledge of the location of the filters they would find it difficult to find. We decided that adding a search button on the homepage would prove to be most effective. Once on the search page, users can navigate to any categories as they wish without having them to be hidden behind search filters.
The filters and sorts were redesigned to reduce clutter as the original’s filters would add too many filter bubbles which takes too much screen estate.
Hi-fi User Testing
We performed some rudimentary user testing with our new prototyped designs. We wanted to see what of our designs had worked and improved upon the original design, as well as if there were problems we did not foresee or new ones that our designs have created. Because the new prototypes only had basic functionality and interactivity added, we took users through one flow, mirroring the most problematic flow from the original round of user testing
Final Analysis
After performing user testing on the new designs, we have concluded that the new search functions we have designed are much more efficient and intuitive for users looking to navigate the LinkedIn mobile application. Users were able to find the courses section in general on LinkedIn Learning much faster than before with the original design. In addition, the new categorization allowed users to explore things not possible in the old app, such as popular and trending courses on LinkedIn Learning.