LinkedIn’s Evolution: Assessing The New Interface (2020)
LinkedIn rolled out its new stories feature earlier this year — a tool that was made famous through Instagram and Snapchat. It also included a video chat feature. Though not an instant success, with a pandemic still taking the world by storm — socializing through screens is the new norm.
As of mid-October, LinkedIn has made obvious updates to its interface. This includes small details like turning their squared edges into curved ones and eliminating contrast colors in buttons and the search bar feature.
The Bouba/Kika Effect
The Bouba/Kiki effect is a phenomenon about how the human brain attaches abstract meanings to visual shapes and speech in a consistent way. This effect extends to personality traits as well. So traits like “friendly” and “easygoing” can be associated with more round images. UX designers will keep this in mind when implementing visual elements associated with brands.
In the case of LinkedIn’s new design, the rounded images can give the feed a more inviting and “friendly” appeal to current and prospective users. You can see this change in each of the sections of a user’s profile as well as your own home news feed. Each of the icons also became more round.
Inviting Content Engagement
On the new home feed, the sidebars slightly changed to highlight prospective activity of a user. It was always an option to “follow” profiles or business’ on the platform. There has been two changes to this section (1) The CTA and (2) The footer. As mentioned above, with the plethora of content users are putting out on LinkedIn, there has been more activity over hashtag usage as an SEO tactic to get content to reach new audiences. With that in mind, LinkedIn has highlighted the Hashtag usage with a “add to your feed” CTA (vs. the previous “who to follow CTA). The footer of the sidebar has also changed by blending more into the background rather than being an explicit section of the sidebar.
Another terminology change is the news section located on the upper right corner of the sidebars. The old way of presenting the news's popularity is by mentioning how many posts are being shared about the topic (similar to how Twitter presents its trending page). The NEW way Linkedin is presenting this is by presenting the numbers of readers. This makes sense — considering LinkedIn doesn’t have as many active users as Twitter, it’s hard to amplify a topic that only has “43 posts” compared to Twitter which will have thousands of mentions within a mere half hour for any given topic.
Conclusion
Observation
This change was bound to come. Jessica Rudis, a Digital Director at Disney, has predicted that UGC is a dying creative source as more people push their brand across social channels. LinkedIn is only adapting to the change of their users' wants and is turning into a content creation channel of their own.
Takeaways
I expect a rise in content creators for LinkedIn. Considering how COVID has impacted the past year for the job market, many turned to LinkedIn to continue to get their profile noticed by recruiters, mentors, and others. This habit will likely grow over time.
There are a handful of small nuanced design and optimization changes I’ve noticed on LinkedIn that I notice the more I scroll through. I’m happy to connect and hear your opinions about the new interface change!
LinkedIn: Brianna Lytle
