LinkedIn Case Study:
Revitalizing Business Card Culture.
Overview
Ever since I updated my LinkedIn profile while working at a startup, I’ve received so many cold and unnecessary connections and messages from random people, frustrated about how they are irrelevant to my career or business opportunities. Additionally, female users are still suffering from inappropriate messages from men on LinkedIn. There, I started to ask myself, “how can I make connection experience better in professional settings?”
Role
User Research
Product Design
User Experience Design
Duration
1 week
Objective
to practice exploring possible design/business idea into an existing product using user-centric approach within a time-frame
Problem:
Users have hard time connecting with professionals on LinkedIn because the connections are sometimes hard-to-trust and hard-to-remember.
Business Goal:
Connect world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful.
Solutions:
Solution 1:
Quickly connect with professionals whom you can trust and you've met in real life.
Solution 2:
Strengthen your LinkedIn profile with your business card.
Process Overview:
Understanding the Problem
To understand the problem, I asked myself a few questions to guide through the journey.
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How do LinkedIn users connect with professional people in real life?
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How do LinkedIn users connect with professional people online?
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Do LinkedIn users use QR code feature to connect with professionals?
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When do LinkedIn users mostly connect with others in real life or online?
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What aspects make LinkedIn users trust strangers more?
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How often do users connect with others?
Initial Research:
Understanding the Users
My goal here was to fully understand how the LinkedIn users interact with each other both inside and outside the app with more professional purposes.
I took screenshots of my friends working in New York City and Boston
I’ve conducted interviews with 5+ people, mix of males and females, in New York City and Boston through Facetime because I wanted to obtain experiences from those who are 1) currently working full-time and 2) using LinkedIn regularly. Here were some key insights:
Initial Research Insights
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Users barely knew about the existence of QR code features
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Users rather used business cards as a quick exchanging professional information in the field
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Users can’t remember everyone they’ve met
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Users trust people whom they’ve met in real life
User Persona
Name: Juliet Smith
24 year old business woman who works as an advisory associate at a finance consulting company in New York City. She loves going to finance conferences or happy hour for networking for insights in her field.
Goal
Pain Points
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She meets as many people as possible at conferences or happy hour
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She only connects with people whom she can trust
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She can’t remember everyone whom she’ve met at her conference or happy hour
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She doesn’t want to spend too much time on finding people whom she’ve met
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User Scenario
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Problem
Users have hard time connecting with professionals on LinkedIn because the connections are sometimes hard-to-trust and hard-to-remember.
Brainstorming with HMW
Brainstorming with my friend in Manhattan
After interviewing my friends working in New York City and Boston, I invited one of them to my brainstorming session to dig deeper into what we can do with these problems. We’ve come up with several ideas that tackle the offline issues as well as the online ones to discuss about the inevitable pros and cons analysis:
How might we create an experience that utilizes the physical interaction between professionals to quickly and effectively connect with each other and yet still maintain QR code features?
Solutions - Revitalizing Business Card Culture
How Might We question helped me to come up with the solutions to tackle the problem I've defined from Linkedin connection experience. The following are the flows of two solution:
1. Business Card Scanning
2. Updating Profile with Business Card
Information Architecture
I built Information Architecture to guide me through what elements are necessary in each page based on the two specific features that I've decided to implement.
Information Architecture for the Overall Flow of the New Feature
Low-Fidelity Wireframes
After determining the major UI and information elements, I constructed a low-fidelity wireframes to further expand the user flow, to help me guide through the process.
Designing UI Elements
Some hand-drawn prototypes to compare the pros and cons of each iteration.
How Other Products Execute Scanning Feature
This is not a common service, so I had to also look up some of “QR code” features from several famous products for the scanning page.
Market Research for Scanning Business Card or QR Code
Adding Business Cards as an ‘account’ is not a common feature, but there is one product in Korea that implements this that caught my attention. I utilized this product to fully understand how they transitioned this business card sharing to connecting users. Unlike other products using QR codes, Remember app prioritized the business card add button, list of names, positions, and companies.
Determining UI Elements for Business Card Connecting
Based on my market research analysis, I had to decide which elements were needed on the scanning screen to make the flow more feasible. Because I’m not trying to eliminate QR Code features for LinkedIn, I tried to combine QR Code and Business Card Connecting together in one screen.
Options for Scanning Page UI Positions
From the existing Scanning Page, I added a section for business card scanning feature. When using a phone camera, the users are likely to be holding the mobile phone limited to Thumbzone, so I utilized the illustration of the thumbzone as a reference.
Entry Points to Scanning Page on Feed
Now that I determined what I want for the scanning screen, I needed to find an entry point of the scanning page. I tried variety of icon positions to determine which one is more encouraging and yet not distracting. A added too many options on the top bar, which are overwhelming and confusing to the users. D gave me allowance to combine QR code and Business Card Adding.
Visual Design
The “where to place” is done, now, how can I clearly deliver what users can do with the visual designs?
I created the icons based on LinkedIn’s brand guideline—emphasizing the circle and rectangular shapes inspired by the ‘i’s in the brand name, and tried to signify “Adding Connections” instead of solely “QR Code and Business Card, ” which could potentially misleading in a single icon.
How Other Products Execute Updating/Verifying Profile
Market Research for Verification and Updating owner’s business card feature
The approach of this business card feature is to build trust, so in order to do so, the users must update their own business card to build the credits and sense of identification. I researched on Instagram verification to see how heavy they’re weighing the verification process, and I found out that they consider verification very seriously; the users must request with government-issued photo ID. However, updating business card is up to the users to build the trust and it’s a physical proof of your existence in the company.
Determining UI Elements for Business Card Updating
Business cards are to build trust between LinkedIn connections, so users must be highly recommended to update their business card into their account.
A is selected because placing the Business Card Update icon next to the account name indicates that users are allowed to update their additional identification on LinkedIn, providing more sense of trust and identification to the business cards. D is also selected to emphasize the importance of building credits of the user’s account to expand their network without visually distracting the content too much.
Visual Design
I combined the Business Card Update and Business Card Updated/Verified icons in the same position next to the account name, but I need an icon for the Updated.
Visual Design Options for Accounts Who Updated their Business Cards
A is rather misleading about what it is verifying or updated of. However, C is straightforward about what it is signifying: business card and updated/verified.
Final Design Prototype
After determining the major UI element positions and designs, I transformed a low-fidelity wireframes to high fidelity flow, and further expanded the flow with the animated prototypes.
Updating business card in my profile
Adding Connections through business card scanning feature
Looking Forward
LinkedIn definitely is a great platform that allows users to connect professionally. However, simply creating resumes and experiences on the profile isn’t building any trust with others nor enhancing the offline experiences. People do not engage with users when they don’t have credibility.
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There are more opportunities to create more meaningful features on LinkedIn. LinkedIn should provide more features to allow users to build credibility to interact with others professionally through more offline and online information, eliminating all unnecessary, random connections or messages.