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making space for creatives to showcase their work on LinkedIn.

Practical redesign for creative minds  

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Case Study

Duration: 2-week sprint, April 2022

Tools: Figma, Trello, Google Workspace, Mackbook Pro

Client: Conceptual, Team Project

Linkedin Creative

Roles: Visual design | Product design | UX  | E-commerce research and analysis

Team: Joy Wai

Introduction

Problem: Currently, Linkedin does not have a space for creatives to display their work.

Goal: Create space for Creatives to display digital media directly from the LinkedIn profile page.

 

research

Cocktail Girl

inspiration

I looked to understand what companies are implementing great features. So, I decided to do a Competitive and Comparative Analysis. 

In the competitive analysis, I looked at the sites of Dribbble and Behance. Specifically sought to understand how our competitors succeeded in implementing uploading and presenting features.

competitive

comparative

With the comparative analysis, I researched Pinterest and Twitter to compare a few specific features. With a focus on the ability to organize by categories, the drag and drop to rearrange feature, the in-app editing, adjusting, and tagging.

survey+interviews

Digging deeper into research, we turned to Surveys and Interviews. 

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23 people were surveyed to give us helpful information about our target users and how they are currently using LinkedIn. Here are the survey insights.

 

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  • Age ranged from 20 - 70, with most of the participants falling in the 30 - 39 age range.

  • 91% of the users use LinkedIn

  • 60% did not have a portfolio, but half of these users planned on creating a portfolio.

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Next questions: 

who uses LinkedIn, what for, and on what device?

The majority of users had done some visual media ranging from graphic design to developer or software engineering. It turns out that.

 

  • 95% used Linkedin for networking

  • 86% used it for job searching

  • 29% of people are currently showing their work on Linkedin, and when discussing potential interviews the remainder of users thought they would benefit from having a creative showcase.

  • 86% of participants used desktop

  • 89% of participants said they want their work to be found on desktop 

With this new understanding, I decided to focus on a website vs. mobile app

interviews

Interview .jpeg

I interviewed five people to dive deeper into their thoughts, needs, goals, and frustrations.

 

While there was a lot to be said about LinkedIn, I decided to stick closely to a couple of quotes.  ​

"Simplicity is key."

"I want to be able to showcase my specialties​"

In order to organize this information into a digestible format, I created a persona.

user persona

The Hardworking Haddy 

Haddy views LinkedIn as a formal business space used to network with other designers and searches for jobs. They think it’ll be helpful to share some of their projects on LinkedIn for potential recruiters and clients.


However, they find LinkedIn to be limiting and doesn’t provide a space for them to properly showcase their work and display their sense of style. They want something easy to navigate and that they don’t have to update too often.

goals ​

  • Customizable templates that are easy to use

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  • Tags so recruiters/clients can find their work

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  • Ability to categorize or organize their projects

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  • Option showcase different types of projects

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  • A clean display that focuses on their visual projects

frustrations ​

  • LinkedIn pages have no personality or character

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  • Don’t want to spend too much time updating their profile

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  • It  is very text-heavy and doesn’t offer strong visuals

With a clear view of the user’s needs and frustrations, we are able to hone in on a problem statement.

Worker with Ladder

problem statement

Haddy needs a simple, visually appealing way to showcase their projects on LinkedIn so that they can present their professional and creative self to potential recruiters or clients.

ideate + design

current feature section

linkedin feature-samples-of-your-work-on-your-profile-1.jpeg

  • Before we go into our proposed changes in the grayscale, I wanted to touch briefly on what you currently offer through the 'Featured Section', since this is currently where portfolios and projects are showcased.

  • Based on the persona we developed, we moved forward to create a greyscale, mid-fidelity prototype.​

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  • In getting feedback from users, we heard that they find this feature simple to use, the layout is clean and they can access it easily by adding a profile section.

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  • However, they feel limited since they don't have the option to combine different forms of media or the option to rearrange. The featured section is currently fixed to the top of the profile and projects are only displayed chronologically.

low fidelity

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  • Based on our user research, we kept the current segmented layout on a user's profile page, but propose to add in a new "projects" section and social media widgets section.​

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  • New Widgets and Projects sections

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  • Give users more control and flexibility

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  • Focus on simplicity and visuals​

 

  • users preferred to use LinkedIn as an addition to their portfolio as opposed to a portfolio replacement.

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  • Want to use LinkedIn to display current projects from their portfolio alongside their work and education history.

 

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usability testing

What is a usability test and what is it good for?​

  1. Uncover Problems - in the design 

  2. Discover Opportunities to improve the design

  3. Learn About Users- Behavior, and Preferences and thought of the design 

Task

  1. Create a project, add 2 images

  2. Preview and publish a project

  3. View updated profile

Goal

100% completion rate for all 3 tasks in under 4 minutes

What we found was different than our goal

usability test results

  • 5 people participated in the usability testing

  • 80% completed all 3 tasks 

  • There was an average of 8 errors and 17 total clicks per user.

  • It took our users between 1:35 - 7:45 minutes (fastest to longest time in which the person did not complete all 3 tasks) Time to complete all 3 tasks

high fidelity prorotype

next steps+takeaways

Because creatives display their art differently, it is hard to have a one-size-fits-all solution. So I would love to do more research and interviews and narrow down what creatives want. I would also love to talk to recruiters about what they are looking for when searching through potential candidates' LinkedIn profiles.

Take aways

Next steps

This project made me realize that it is wise to focus on one feature when ideating. It is challenging to determine individual effects with multiple changes happening simultaneously. A good approach may include A/B testing to reveal what users want us to focus on. 

Unfortunately, we could not interview creatives on Linkedin with a portfolio. We decided to focus on the people we interviewed because they were the only cohort we had available for this project. We may have lost sight of what we were trying to accomplish while trying to appease everyone's requests. In the end, the new features we created geared toward creatives were rewarding to research and build.

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