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CASE STUDY
LinkedIn, since its inception, has transformed how professionals connect, network, and grow. However, as the platform scales, the focus has shifted predominantly towards growing one's network numerically rather than qualitatively. The essence of genuine relationships — meaningful interactions, shared learning, and mutual growth — often gets lost amidst connection requests and endorsements.
PROBLEM
Professionals on linkedin struggle to find relevant people to connect with while looking for mentorship and mutual growth.
SCENARIO
People tend to increase the network numerically rather than actually connecting with these people which lead to dissatisfaction during the interaction leading to frustration and chat abandonment.
SCOPE
Designing a more user-friendly networking experience that allows users to easily find mentorship that they are looking for, ultimately developing real connections based on shared interest and purpose.
BUILDING MEANINGFUL CONNECTIONS ON LINKEDIN
Millions of people use linkedin to find people in the same professional background in hope for mutual growth. So I tried to find LinkedIn users and what they care about most:
1. Fruitful Interaction with relevant connections.
2. The content shared by the connection
3. Building good relations in the similar professional aspirations
4. Cross profession learning for potential career change
5. Company Updates 

With feedback from real users in mind, I took a look at the anatomy of our most common story types. The idea was to break things down into their atomic parts, and make the design choices that serves the needs of the user right now.
OR
OR
CURRENT USER JOURNEY OF CONNECTING WITH PEOPLE
I interviewed 24 participants from different professional levels to find their challenges and pain points in their use cases.
68%
feel their majority connections are people they don’t know and never had a meaningful conversation with.
64%
feel overwhelmed by the number of connection requests or messages on LinkedIn
86%
of the 15-entry level professionals and students relied on linkedin as a primary platform for mentorship, guidance and finding jobs.
What challenges do you face when trying to form meaningful connections on LinkedIn?
I asked myself if the present design is meeting three key objectives:
With these objectives in mind i conducted the secondary research, to validate my initial hypothesis. I also wanted to know what aspirations the user had as a professional individual using this platform to learn about the scope and find opportunities.
How might we connect people who are looking for similar kind of interactions?
How might we add value to every connection in the network?
How might we foster a network of mutual growth and learning?

USER PERSONA
Professional Networking
(Event & learning-centric)
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Community Building
Casual Networking
Job-related interaction
Challenges to Success
1. Ensuring that deeper connections and collaborative spaces remain professional and focused on career growth.
2. Ensuring users don't feel overwhelmed by too many information and prompts.
3. Pushing people towards interactions.
4. Finding & Connecting people with similar intentions
5. Convincing users to embrace new features and change their interaction habits on the platform.
Added a new filter ‘ OPEN TO MENTOR’ when the user wants to search for a person who is open to provide feedback or guidance.
This filter would make it easier for users seeking mentorship to connect directly with professionals who are actively open to mentoring. It improves efficiency in finding relevant people, cutting down the time spent sifting through unrelated profiles.
Support for Career Development
Users looking to advance their careers or switch industries would find it simpler to connect with experienced professionals willing to share insights and guide them. This could help democratize career development opportunities.
Better Alignment of Intentions
Both mentors and mentees can signal their intentions clearly. This can lead to more productive and mutually beneficial relationships as people are more likely to connect with shared goals in mind.
I placed the “Open to” tag in the activity section because users often look here to learn about the person’s availability and presence in the platform.
The target size is intended to be noticeable, having close proximity to the user’s main interaction options i.e. “Message”, “Follow” and “Connect”.. According to Fitt’s law this will reduce the cognitive load and time needed to locate and understand that the profile is open to certain interactions
Displaying the "Open to" status on a public LinkedIn profile acts as a social proof that the person is actively involved in the professional world. When combined with a strong network and a large number of followers, it adds to the user’s credibility and makes others more likely to reach out and engage.
The introduction of this feature could also foster more connections, messages, and interactions, encouraging people to be more active on LinkedIn and increasing platform engagement. Users would be motivated to explore the platform, knowing they can find mentoring opportunities.
FEEDBACK
POSITIVES
Aligning with User intent
Clear tagging
Subtle integration
Users don’t feel overwhelmed by this feature. Naturally fits into existing language-[non-intrusive]
Directly aligns with the intention in using LinkedIn. Caters to active job seekers and professionals looking to build networks.
Users felt that it was easy to identify what type of engagement the person is looking forward to have.
WHAT CALLS FOR IMPROVEMENT
(1)
POSSIBILITY


Users felt that the “open to” tag is limiting the adversity that the person could offer and thus will lead to hesitation in diverse interaction.
Offer more comprehensive range of options to the user and give the user a chance to optimize their tags.
example- Seeking
Looking for
Open to
(2)
POSSIBILITY


Users expressed their concern that these tags may not eliminate the present daunting process in reaching out to the person with mutual interests.
Call to-Action Integration
There should be a mapped out step after the user goes through these tags and find relevant result. Because currently the intentions are clearly conveyed but the interaction is not directed accordingly.

example- “Request Mentorship”, “Offer Collaboration”
(3)
POSSIBILITY


It was observed while testing that some users needed some context to understand these tags or make sense out of it.
Contextual Information
On hovering, these tags can provide explaining of user’s expectation regarding the interaction as pop-ups or tooltips.
example- “Looking for freelance opportunities in automotive design”
“ Interested in collaborating on fun, experimental UI/UX design projects.”
This is expected to offer- Clarity and focus Time saving Expectation Setting
(4)
POSSIBILITY


Users wanted to know how these tags where they express their desire to mentor someone would be beneficial to them. They felt that this gesture should be rewarding to them as well.
Integration with other LinkedIn features
We could tie these tags into LinkedIn’s endorsement system or recommendations, it can provide great social proof.
Example- Adding endorsement a Mentor tag with endorsement from mentees would build credibility.
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