Critique LinkedIn

Prompt

Interviewer:

"I'd like for us to walk through the LinkedIn app and to get your thoughts on the visual design, interaction design, what could be improved, etc. Let's reverse-engineer the app and try to figure out why they made the decisions they made."

💡 Remember the steps to solving the App Critique: 1) Set Context 2) Walk Through a Flow 3) Evaluate The Flow 4) Evaluate the Business

Step 1: Set Context

The interviewer might ask

"Before we open up LinkedIn, let's think about what the world was like before this app or company existed. What was the human problem, and how did this app solve it?"

💡 The interviewer wants to get a sense for your visual and interaction design skills as well as your product thinking ability. Start by tackling product thinking. Talk about the company, what problem the app solves, or other contextual topics. It shows that you can think holistically and through a business lens.

How you might respond

Before LinkedIn, professional networking was a combination of in-person events and a Rolodex of business cards. To meet new people and expand your professional network you would need to attend events and exchange business cards. Some problems with this include:

• Your network was limited to your geographic area
• As people changed jobs, business cards became out-of-date and obsolete
• If you were open to new opportunities you had to actively seek them out and apply

LinkedIn solves these problems. You now have access to new professional connections all over the world, with smart recommendations based on who you are connected with. You receive updates when a connection changes moves or jobs, solving the staleness issue with business cards. And finally, if you’re open to new job opportunities you simply set your status and recruiters come to you with open roles.

The interviewer might ask:

"What are some use cases for LinkedIn?”

How you might respond:

A few reasons to use LinkedIn include:

1. Keeping up with professional connections and their careers
2. Reading the latest news about companies I follow
3. Looking at open roles and companies that are hiring

💡 Always talk about use cases other than your own. It shows your ability as a designer to put yourself in your user's shoes and think about their needs. If it's a two-sided network (e.g. buyers and sellers), talk about the other side of the network.

But other than being a social network, it is also a two-sided network comprising job seekers and companies/recruiters who are hiring. On the other side of the network, recruiters use LinkedIn to:

1. Post open positions
2. Search for and message potential candidates

💡 If the interviewer doesn't guide you or instruct you what to do next, propose selecting a use case and walking through it.

Of all the use cases, let’s walk through looking for open roles and companies that are hiring.

Step 2: Walk Through a Flow

💡 Use the first impression of the home screen to offer critique on the overall visual design and information architecture of the app.

At first glance, it looks like the home tab is a feed of posts. This is a common content layout and interaction pattern ideal for browsing experiences. Because this is the home tab, it's clear that LinkedIn is focusing on the first use case we identified of keeping up with your professional connections. A few notes on the visual design:

• The header is used for common things like search, profile and messaging, but also for branding. The persistent blue header reminds you that you are in the LinkedIn app.
• The background of the feed is a gray color which shows the separation between cards. Despite that, the post composer at the top of the feed is a little too subtle. Assuming they have some sort of engagement goal which includes post creation, they could do more to visually emphasize the composer like adding shadow, giving it a border, or including it in the header. It also visually competes with the search bar; the search bar could be de-emphasized to draw more attention to the composer.
• The posts themselves are pretty standard and look identical to other social media platforms.
• The tab bar at the bottom for the most part is very intuitive. It includes icons and labels which helps with understandability. It looks like they've added "Post" which is probably another entry point to the composer.

"Jobs" is the last item in the tab bar which is good because it supports the third use case of looking for open roles and companies that are hiring.

Before moving on, a quick note on iconography: using a briefcase icon to represent "Jobs" is a lot like using a floppy disk to represent "Save". Floppy disks aren't used anymore yet people still know what it represents. Similarly, brief cases are much less common these days but is still a recognizable symbol of work, or jobs.

First of all, a list of open jobs is exactly what I was expecting, meaning the label was accurate and the design of this page is generally intuitive.

Something that surprised me, however, was that the header changed. The search bar changed to be specific to jobs and a "more" or "menu" icon was added. It was unexpected because generally the top header of an app is consistent across the entire app. In fact, on all the rest of the tabs (minus "Post" which opens the composer) the header remains unchanged. Only on the Jobs screen does it change. To confuse things further, directly below is a section titled "Job searches" with a callout saying searches will show up here.

Generally empty states don't provide a lot of value and should be avoided. One thing I would test if I were a designer on the team would be to only show this section if there were a search history. Another option would be to use it as an opportunity to teach the user how to search. For example the string could say "Your job search history will show up here" followed by a link "Start a search" or even pre-filled search terms they can easily select.

Moving on to the list of open jobs, the first thing I notice is the title "Based on your Profile". Whatever algorithm they have to determine what jobs to show me is quite accurate as all of the results are in my area of expertise. But I'm sure there are edge cases where the suggested jobs are inaccurate. In that case there should be a way to see exactly what data from your profile is being used and be able to disregard or edit it.

For the actual list cells, their consistency makes me think they are using some sort of standard component with the company logo on the left, the job title in bold on the right, and metadata below.

This consistent layout makes the list of jobs very scannable. There also seem to be fixed and flexible components that can be customized per listing. The logo, job title, company, location, and date published seem to be fixed, with flexible items including connections that work there, "Be an early applicant", alumni from your company who work there, number of applicants, and whether you can "Easy Apply". The problem is with this many variables the screen gets a little cluttered and distracting. Should the users focus be on the faces they recognize who work at that company? Or the bright green icon and font saying you could be an early applicant? I wonder how they prioritize these things when there are multiple. For example if you might be an early applicant but also have connections who work there, which one do they show? I'm guessing they have data showing which are more compelling to get people to tap through.

Finally, there's no way to directly apply for these roles. It's fairly intuitive that if you tap on a row it will take you to a detailed view of that role, but that adds an extra step. I'd hypothesize that adding an apply button directly to the row would increase click-throughs to the application. The one risk is that click-throughs to the application might increase but conversion on the application might drop. This would be due to intent. If a user has seen a role and clicked through to the details screen, they have shown more intent and would be more likely to complete the application. All of this would need to be tested and confirmed with data of course. Perhaps they already have and what we're looking at is the best solution.

Tapping on a job listing lands you on a detailed view of that job, which was what I was expecting. At first glance, there seems to be a lot of sections, a lot of inconsistency, and a lot of things shouting for my attention.

Everything in the top section does seem like the most important information and actions. The hero image and logo make it clear what company this role is for. The primary and secondary buttons draw your attention to the next action to take, and the icon in the Apply button lets you know you'll be leaving the app to apply (likely on the company's website). One small issue is the placement of the days since the job was posted. It seems like a random placement, considering nowhere else is there text top-right aligned. Like on the previous screen, it could be placed left aligned as a metadata line.

Overall though there is a lack of consistency with the font. There are countless combinations of sizes, weights, and colors (shades of gray). For example, in the "Include a referral" section there are 5 different font styles. Having too many font styles makes it harder to read and understand. A clear system of font styles makes an interface visually simpler and also easier to read and understand.

There's generally a lot going on with this screen. You can:

• Save
• Apply
• Learn more about the job description
• Ask for a referral from a connection who works there
• Message a connection who works there
• Set an alert for similar jobs
• Upgrade to Premium
• Message the job poster
• See more similar job postings

Often screens like this start very simple but one feature at a time things get added until it's a very complicated and users become overwhelmed.

If I were a designer at LinkedIn, I'd want to look at the research to find out what are the key jobs people want to do when they get to this screen. I would then design the screen primarily around those things and make everything else very secondary. If I had to guess, the main things people want to do here would be to learn more about the role and to apply. If that were true I'd emphasize the job details by showing more of it by default, downplay "Save" in order to make "Apply" larger, and maybe organize everything else into a single section of other things you can do.

Step 3: Evaluate The Flow

The interviewer might ask

"You walked through the use case of looking for open roles and companies that are hiring. How well does this flow solve for that use case?"

💡 As you sum things up be sure to incorporate thoughts on interaction design, visual design, navigation, usability issues, etc.

How you might respond

When people are in the market for a new job, LinkedIn is probably one of their first stops. A few things they're doing well and some opportunities include:

• Including Jobs as a tab in the bottom bar is a smart move seeing as it's a major use case. It doesn't take long to find that if what you're trying to do is find your next job.
• The top section of the Jobs screen is a bit confusing. They should either remove that empty state altogether or use it as an opportunity to teach users how to search for their ideal role.
• The list of jobs on the Jobs page is nice because they've used a consistent component that is easy to scan. But because they have so many flexible data points that can be added, it's gotten a bit cluttered and it's hard to tell which job is right for me. Another opportunity would be adding the apply button directly to this screen to potentially increase application conversion.
• The job details screen has all of the right information for me to decide if I want to apply, but they've added so many sections and font styles that it has become a bit overwhelming. Focusing on the core task users want to complete on this screen and de-emphasizing everything else would improve this screen and the overall flow.

Step 4: Evaluate the Business

The interviewer might ask

"How does LinkedIn make money? What's the business model? What metrics do you think they care about?"

How you might respond

A few potential business models might include:

• Subscription: Twice in the flow we saw an up-sell to try their Premium product for free. This is a classic "freemium" model, where the core product is given to users for free, but they can unlock more features and value by paying a monthly or annual subscription. In this flow in particular they are pushing the value prop of seeing what jobs you would be competitive for. I'm guessing depending on where you are in the app they cater the value-prop of the up-sell to that use case or flow.
• Recruiter Tools: As we talked about earlier, a core user demographic for LinkedIn is the recruiters who are posting open jobs and seeking qualified candidates. They almost certainly build custom recruiting tools and charge companies and hiring firms a lot of money to use them.
• Ads: The feed of posts is a perfect place to allow businesses to show ads and target their potential customers. Like on other social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, ads are a lucrative way to offer a free product to users while providing value to businesses.

In terms of business metrics that LinkedIn might be tracking or goal themselves on, a few might be:

• Active Users: Whether it's daily, weekly, or monthly, active users is always a good metric to track the health of a product. It is often a prerequisite to other metrics, because sufficient traffic is needed to gain statistical significance on other metrics.
• Percent of Paid Users: For any business with a "freemium model, free users cost the business money and paid customers make money. Therefore you want to watch the ratio of paid to free customers and always try to increase that percent.
• Meaningful Actions: This can mean different things for different companies and teams. You can assume the team working on the Jobs flow we walked through cares a lot about application conversion (e.g. taps on a job listing, taps on "Apply", and submits the application) as a meaningful action.