No Mod Required

People ask, I deliver…

I was asked, in a comment, to elaborate on my throwaway line about the interface for LinkedIn being terrible. I started to reply in another comment, typed for a little bit and then realized I’d written a hundred or so words in about thirty seconds. I thought, “there’s a proper post in this somewhere” and then moved the whole circus up here. What follows are basically unfiltered thoughts about the interface based on my experience with it yesterday- trying to update my profile and trying to add one person as a connection.

As a note, this isn’t to be taken as a serious evaluation of the site. These are more off-the-cuff remarks based on one small personal interface with the application. They also, by their very nature, focus on the negative aspects of the user experience. A proper look at what they’re doing would also highlight more of the good things (such as they are.)

I also want to mention this- I’m sure that people who have used the system regularly are able to navigate it successfully. No need to point that out to me:) I’m an on-again, off-again eBay Power Seller, so I know about plenty about how repetition and familiarity can smooth out even the worst interface kinks.

That said, for me, not being able to benefit from years of learning and adapting to the system, the LinkedIn interface was both confusing and (as often follows “confusing”) frustrating. I had trouble orienting myself and oftentimes there seemed to be no direct way to take any of the actions I wanted to take- basic actions that I expected to be clearly defined right up front.

For instance, when I logged in and was taken to my home page, I had a hard time trying to find a button or area that would allow me to edit my profile. After scanning the area where I expected such functionality to be (I was looking for an “action” type control panel in the main content area) and failing to find anything to looked warm, I eventually found a tab across the top that lead me to “My Profile.” This, to me, seemed like awkward placement as the top tabs other than “Home”, felt like they should be about “everyone else” and not about “me.” Add to that the fact that the tab I was looking for is de-emphasised (set back and in a different color), and it’s no wonder I had a confusing time trying to find the right place to click.

Interestingly, returning this morning to look at the process once again in order to write this piece, I was surprised to see that there was, in fact, an “update your own profile” button centrally located on the page. I had just been unable to find it. I think this is because both the context and design of the “update your own profile” button are off. The way it’s placed makes it seem related to the profile updates of my contacts, which lead me to immediately discount it as something to do with my profile. The small- text/ gray- on- gray/ crowded- against- the- edge- of the- button visual design doesn’t help matters by failing to catch my eye in any meaningful way- I literally didn’t see it until my second pass.

Once I found the page where I was able to edit my profile, matters didn’t improve. When I landed on the profile page, I was greeted with no less than THREE separate buttons styles used to open up editing capabilities. Two of them are actually pretty clear, but the third is insidious and the pure fact that there are three separate “button” designs in one small area of the interface is an area of concern- Consistency is a positive thing.

Here’s a graphic with the three different styles:

And here are the styles in place on the page:

The first two are actually pretty straightforward, althouh I’d prefer a single consistent format in order to lessen the amount of processing needed to work through the site. The third one, the one I was looking for to complete my task is plainly awful.

• Since it doesn’t have an underline or any other styling beyond a dark blue color I had to guess that it’s a link
• When I did guess correctly, and interacted with it, there was no clear hint as to what the payoff for the click might be be. Instead, there’s an underline and an arrow pointing downward. I thought, “what does this mean? Download?” It actually means- go down to the bottom of the page where the editing capability is, but since I’d never been there before, I had no clue what it could possibly mean that would make sense to me in that context. So it was a leap of faith to click on it, hoping that it would take me where I needed to go.

I will say, once I made it past that point, the process smoothed out considerably. There’s a clearly labeled “Edit” button next to existing positions and the “Add Position” button is clear as a bell. Now if they could just make getting there a little more straightforward we’d be in business.

The second part of my task, adding another user as a connection, presented at least one major hiccup. While not necessarily an “interface” issue in a “design” sense (it being a business decision at its heart), it definitely makes for a lesser user experience, so it’s included here. Apparently, you cannot contact a user directly through the system without upgrading to a paid account. The lack of a “message user” function or the equivalent of a myspace “friend request” was initially quite confusing to me and definitely will temper my interest in using the system. I expected to be able to use the system, in a straightforward manner, to connect with people without necessarily remembering or knowing their current email address. When I’m current with contact information for people or when, like me, people have email addresses that are basically eternal it’s not really a problem (although I have obviously have less reason to actually use the system to contact or connect with those people). The problem comes when I’m slightly out of touch with a user and I don’t have current contact info- many people use work emails for this and trying to keep track of those in technology is a nightmare. In those cases I’m out of luck and can’t use the system for something I would find really useful- reconnecting with people I’ve worked with over the years. There’s already a queue of people I know who I haven’t connected with because of the way the system is set up.

And that’s that. two good hours and five billion words based off of maybe one thirty minute interaction with the system. I’m not sure what that means, but it was certainly an interesting exercise.