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📢This project was the 2023 LinkedIn summer internship 7 days design challenge.
As a result, I was selected as a product design intern🥳🎉
Introduction
LinkedIn is a place where people can connect to people they know, to share professional experience and opportunities.
Task
Design an experience that helps college students discover and connect to their classmates.
Before starting the research, I took the time to understand the task and the objective.
This process helped me clarify and prioritize what research method I should use, the questions I need to ask,
and what I'm looking to understand as the result of the research.
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To start the research off, I checked for any existing data points.
Discovering and connecting means that students should communicate through Linkedin,
but what is the most used method of communication between students?
2019 survey by INSIDE HIGHER ED states that Linkedin is one of the least used social media platforms.
I created a 14-question survey and received responses from 40+ current college students in 24 hours.
To gain deeper insight into definition of "connect" and to better understand student Linkedin usage,
I conducted five 40-minute interviews with students over the span of 1.5 days.
To keep the results objective and to ensure diverse perspectives were captured,
surveys were done with students from various programs, schools, and years. Through the interview,
I also looked to understand more about why students would want to connect with people with similar professional interests on Linkedin,
and what features may be helpful for this usage.
I created an affinity mapping based on interview and survey responses (short responses) to organize the results by themes.
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I created a persona based on common findings from the survey and the interview results.
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Based on the research, below How Might We questions were asked for the design ideation.
User flows helped define the workflow and helped identify any missing steps or flow.
I wanted the users to have more visibility and better proximity to the product other than the ingress through Linkedin Groups (path 2 below), so a link to Pods in Linkedin's drawer menu (path 1 below) was added.
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I will now showcase the main features of Linkedin Pods and the updates to Linkedin's existing features that accomodate Pods.
Added a new card in the onboarding page.
This can raise awareness of Linkedin Pods and how it facilitates discover & connect between classmates.
This page can also be made visible to existing users and not just the new joiners.
Added Degree and Major/Program input sections
Even within the same school, different degrees may use similar acronyms and names for the program.
This may result in Linkedin recommending people to connect that have no relation to the person.
Linkedin Pods is embedded in Linkedin Groups.
It requires additional information from the users to recommend the specific program group.
Hence, degree and major/program inputs are collected from the students.
Added Top Tabs on the Group Page
Users who are not already part of a program group will get a notification to join the school's program group.
Users who are already part of the group will see the new group screen on right, and tabs are created in the group page.
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Discover Pods!
This is the logo for Linkedin Pods. Idea came from dot on the "i" of Linkedin and the spherical "peas" in pods.
Linkedin's illustrations are usually 2D, but I wanted to give Linkedin Pods a more casual and active vibe, and used a 3D illustration.
Also, Linkedin Groups photos are cut in squares.
In Pods, the images are cut in circles to stay true to the theme!
I divided pods to three main categories.
1. Classes - for discovery of classmates beginning of each quarter/semester.
2. Extra Curriculars - for discovery of classmates during the quarter/semester.
3. Internships - cohesive to Linkedin; for discovery of classmates during the quarter/semester.
1. Categories
There are three categories of content on Pods.
Pinned Posts - These are configured by Pod Leaders. Important announcements, FAQs, and information can be pinned.
Posts - Posts that are relevant for pod's interests and intent.
Pod Chats - Can be off-topic posts for more personable interaction with pod mates.
2. Users can change their pod profile picture
Linkedin profile pictures are usually very professional.
In Pods, you can express yourself better through your profile picture and feel more intimately connected to the page!
3. Connect with all members
A Pod is already an intimate and/or smaller group of people.
So added a feature that allows for one-click to connect to all people.
4. Thread-based
Groups encourage feed based information sharing, whereas Pods are thread based.
Feeds are good for scrolling through for fast and accelerated consumption of high level information,
whereas contents on Pods are intended to be targeted, specific, and detailed.
1. Invite leaders
Pod members can invite leaders.
But the flow needs to be differentiated with member invites since leaders are a group of a peer-mentors.
2. Reward for pod leaders
Pod leaders are given a badge on their Linkedin profile and they can add the pod leader experience as volunteer work.
