LinkedIn Icebreakers
NEW FEATURE CONCEPT | iOS APP
TEAM
Erin Rowland
Julia Sevilla
ROLE
UX Designer, UX Researcher, UI Designer
TIMELINE
2.5 Weeks
TOOLS
Sketch
InVision
Keynote
Marvel
Trello
METHODOLOGY
Mind Mapping | Screener Survey |
User Interviews | Competitive Matrix Affinity Mapping | Persona Development | MoSCoW Mapping Design Studio Ideation | Wireframing Rapid Prototyping | Usability Testing
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01. DISCOVER:
AN AREA OF OPPORTUNITY
Networking can be a challenging and overwhelming task for many people, especially seeing how networking is all about making the right connections in a short amount of time (ie. at networking events).
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When networking within a new industry, people often have trouble approaching others due to many reasons, thereby limiting their potential connections and opportunities.
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We chose LinkedIn for our feature as we
wanted to focus on an app that already
facilitates connections.
HYPOTHESIS
We believe that creating a feature on LinkedIn that facilitates introductions by having users answer an ‘icebreaker’ question while at a networking event will be useful for users who would otherwise be hesitant to approach others.
This will break the ice virtually before they meet face to face and will increase LinkedIn connections by 15%.
COMPETITIVE MATRIX
In order to start off our research, we decided to see where LinkedIn would fall within the current landscape for mobile applications used to facilitate connections or meetings at events.
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We wanted to focus on both general and specialized mobile applications and keep in mind if the applications were geared more towards a professional setting or a social setting.
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Keeping those requirements, we were able to place LinkedIn in the competitive matrix as being a more general and professional networking application.
We chose to design off of the LinkedIn native mobile app because of the necessity of portability and their “Find Nearby” technology.
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Looking into beacons — iBeacon and Eddystone, which are beacons for iOS and Android respectively — would enhance indoor location accuracy of all user devices and be visually represented in a map.
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Beacons would enable the push notification of the icebreaker question once the user’s device enters and triggers the designated geofence.
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USER RESEARCH
Moving forward with our research, we knew we wanted to focus on 3 key objectives in order to get a better understanding of if and how users behaved with the current LinkedIn App and what could be done to improve this experience for them.
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NETWORKING SUCCESS
DETERRENTS
METHODS OF APPROACH
USER INTERVIEWS
Keeping our 3 key research objectives in mind, we went on to interview 11 users. We focused on finding out what their networking successes and failures looked like, what methods they used to approach others and what made them hesitant to approach others.
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KEY INSIGHTS
FEELING INADEQUATE
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“I'm afraid like I'm not competent enough, I have nothing to offer”
TALKING POINTS
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“I break the ice by finding common ground.”
CONNECTIONS
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“I'm looking to make meaningful connections that don't feel fake.”
OUTSIDE INFLUENCES
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“I need something else to get the conversation started.”
02. DEFINE:
USER PERSONA
DANI AYALA
"IT'S HARD BEING AN INTROVERT IN A WORLD WHERE EXTROVERTS ARE REWARDED."
PROBLEM STATEMENT
HOW MIGHT WE HELP DANI BREAK THE ICE SO SHE CAN CONFIDENTLY INTRODUCE HERSELF?
03. DEVELOP:
FEATURE PRIORITIZATION
With Dani in mind, we went on to facilitate feature prioritization using the MoSCoW method. We created a possible list of features and mapped each of the features anywhere from must-have to won’t-have based on how impactful the feature was and how technically feasible it was as well.
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PROTOTYPING AND USABILITY TESTING
After we had decided on which must-have (and some should have) features we wanted for our product, we moved on to creating prototypes, starting with low-fidelity (paper), mid-fidelity and finally moving on to high-fidelity.
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After each round of prototype creation, we usability tested it with potential users before moving up in fidelity.
04. DELIVER:
VIEW PROTOTYPE
FINAL THOUGHTS AND NEXT STEPS
What I learned from this project was that creating a feature for an already existing app is sometimes more difficult than creating a new app itself. We had to make sure LinkedIn's existing user base would understand how this feature would be useful to them.
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After pitching our feature idea to our mock stakeholders (albeit mock stakeholders who have years of User Design experience), we were told that we had done a great job identifying a problem space and our solution could be further tested by running an interactive test.
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