First sketch & redesign LinkedIn layout
Based on user research insight and personas, I drew a brief sketch of the interactive timeline. Staircase will imply career progression and parallel line is placed under the staircase for 2 or more activities happening at the same time. As the survey shows that most people would like to see no more than 5-year previous employment, the timeline offers a 5-year overview with an expand button to display older history if needed.
After that I used Photoshop to slightly redesign the LinkedIn layout and Figma to build an interactive prototype. I did a brief A/B test with my classmates to see how they like the profile header width. All of them like a wider profile header as it is more comfortable to read.
Interactive prototype
I used Figma to create an interactive prototype. The prototype in the video was the revised version after first round of user feedback.
Interactive prototype link:
Feedback from users
I asked three users to test the prototype. Generally they thought the interactive timeline was simple and clear. However, some improvements could be made:
1. “The colour contrast between education and work experience is not big enough.”
2. “I do not understand what’s going on after clicking expand button.”
I have taken their comments into consideration and revised the timeline. Instead of using different colour, I used different line patterns to show education and work experience. I also uploaded the timeline as an image on colour blindness simulator online ( https://www.color-blindness.com/coblis-color-blindness-simulator/ ) to see how the timeline looks like from colour blind people to ensure the information is also accessible to them without relying on colour. For the older job history, I added hover text box and two bigger dots to let users know there are still two more previous jobs to see if they are interested.
I had an in-class presentation on 26 March and received feedback from my classmates and lecturers. Especially Martin, my course lecturer, mentioned two points:
1. What if a person changed from higher to lower position?
2. For people who have more experience and are in senior level, they may not have a progressing career path but working in various industries.
These are the important areas I should consider as well. Staircase timeline surely looks good if a person has a successful career. However, it is not appealing if a downward staircase is shown when changing from senior to lower position.
On the other hand, progressive career path may only be applied to people in earlier stage of career. Also people nowadays tend to work in different fields even in the same profession. For example, a UX researcher can have experience working in finance and travel industry. This is also useful if the timeline can indicate the fields specialized in.
Thanks to all the insights, it’s time to improve and redesign the timeline to address the needs.
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