An event feature on LinkedIn. Adding a new feature to a frequently used platform.
By: Natalia Aquino
Tags: LinkedIn, UI Design, User Interface, User Experience, UX

An event feature on LinkedIn. Adding a new feature to a frequently used platform.

In this weeks’ challenge we need to pick an existing app and add a feature users need. For this challenge I decided to pick the biggest professional networking platform LinkedIn. Natalia Aquino Jan 12, 2020·4 min read

With 660+ million users LinkedIn is the largest professional networking platform in the world. This platform is mainly used to expand your network, find a new job or find your new employer. Most recruiters will first look at your LinkedIn profile before doing anything else.

The missing feature

So what is it that is missing? Well, let me tell you about that by telling you al little bit about my own story. After years of working in marketing for a publisher, I decided to quit my job and transition into a whole different field: UX/UI Design. I signed up for the UX/UI Design bootcamp at Ironhack and here I am, in the middle of the bootcamp loving every step of it. Being in a whole different field also means I need to expand my network and here’s where LinkedIn comes in place.

LinkedIn makes it super easy to connect with people from the field and to start looking for job openings. But having an online presence isn’t the only important thing in networking, another really import part is to actually meet people in person. For this you will have to go to events related to your field and meet people. Now here is where I found a missing feature on the platform. LinkedIn doesn’t provide anything to facilitate for business related events, while events are such a big part for networking and for businesses to show their assets.

Research

Before I can start with the UI part, I need to find out what the users need. Therefore I interviewed several people who frequently attend business related events and asked them about their current flow for going to events. Here in The Netherlands we have a platform called ‘Meetup’ where you can RSVP and attend different events and this is also where most of the people who want to network find events they want to attend. But several people who I interviewt weren’t from here and they told me they currently don’t have a platform they use to find and attend these events. Most of the time they hear from an event through mouth-to-mouth or per e-mail. Also, besides having some dots in their agenda they don’t have an overview of the events they are attending of have attended in the past. This to me seemed a bit out-dated for this time and age. Since LinkedIn is the biggest professional platform in the world, why don’t they provide a service where businesses or individuals can post events and users can RSVP and add them to their agenda?

Start building

Since I only had four days for this challenge the UX Research had to be quick and effective. After the interviews I made a ‘Jobs-to-be-done’ so I knew what I needed to add in the feature. It was clear that uses needed an event feature on LinkedIn, where you are able to RSVP and have an overview of past and future events. I started making lo-fi wireframes on paper and tested them with several users. This way I could see how users will make use of the app and what needed change or what needed to be added.

Hi-Fi Prototype

Before starting building we had to pick if we were going to design for Android or IOS, I chose to work with IOS. I made one mid-fi wireframe and with only jumped straight to the hi-fi. To start the hi-fi I first took several screenshots of the LinkedIn app and build the homepage so I could make my style bord, this way I could start setting all the text styles and colours used in the app. It actually took me the longest to set everything up and make the first page. I made a lot of symbols with nested symbols, which made it so much easier and quicker to build the rest of the feature. On the left you can see I remade the homepage, here I made a small change in the toolbar. Since it’s already possible to write a post at the top of the page, I took that symbol out and replaced it for the new ‘event’ button.