BRIEFLinkedIn wants to boost its "Groups" feature by adding collaboration and task management for companies and co-workers.
CLIENTProject for User Experience Design Immersive at General Assembly, Sydney 2014
DURATION2 weeks of 8 week course
MY ROLEUX designer - individual project
TOOLSAxure, Omnigraffle, Excel, Google Form, Sharpies & paper.
RESULTS• Benefits for the business• Findings of what users want• Similarities and differences with
the regular group feature• Suggested next steps
UX Methodologies: Research, Ideation, Prototyping, Usability Testing.
Adding a new feature to an existing product
SARA MICHELAZZOUser Experience [email protected]
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS & RESEARCH
This involved analyzing existing contact management networking systems, collaboration and task management tools. Research involved understanding the function of LinkedIn Groups, in particular users participating in an existing group and creating a new group.
USER RESEARCH & SURVEY
User research involved understanding the target for the new feature, creating an ad hoc survey to understand how LinkedIn group is perceived and how people go about contact management networking and collaboration tools. The survey was completed by 14 people currently living in Sydney.
USER RESEARCH & SURVEY
3 personas were built for this project. 1 primary persona: Annah, and 3 secondary personas: her classmates, Linda and Bill and their teacher, Tina. The main scenario was Annah creating a new group with her classmates to complete a project from school. The classmates were able to share files, chat and set a shared calendar. Tina, the teacher was added to the chat later to check their work.
"HOW TO INTRODUCE THE FEATURE TO THE GROUP"
Meet the brand vision:The mission of LinkedIn is to connect the world's professionals to enable them to be more productive and successful. LinkedIn "collaboration groups" meets this goal by keeping teams organized and efficient and allows them to share information effectively.
Introduce the group feature:To understand where to introduce the new feature I have mapped the LinkedIn website and analyzed the navigation system. The goal was to use, when possible, the existing features and the current design patterns.
SKETCHING & PROTOTYPING
Identify the main LinkedIn pages involved in merging the new feature with the existing one, using LinkedIn design patterns to keep consistency
USABILITY TESTING
A high fidelity prototype with full features was built in Axure in order to test every interaction that a user does to open a communication group and share files and updates. A script was prepared for usability interviews and 6 people were asked to complete the tasks above on a laptop sharing their thoughts.
ITERATION & PROTOTYPE (AXURE)
Data and thoughts from usability testing were collected and analyzed in order to understand shared pain points. The first design was improved and a second prototype was built.
RESULTS AND PITCH TO STAKEHOLDERS
The following image is a map that allows to explain the main findings of this research in 5 minutes.
The presentation covers:• Benefits for the business• Findings of what users want• Similarities and differences with
the regular group feature• Suggested next steps
Leave a feedback or comment :)
DESIGN IS A WORK IN PROGRESS