EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This report provides a detailed analysis of the heuristic evaluation process used to evaluate
Linkdin application. The evaluation itself was performed using the heuristic evaluation usability
method, based on heuristics provided by Nielsen. This method consists of evaluators comparing
a pre-defined set of usability principles to an application or website while attempting to complete
a system task.
For this project, nine heuristics were used, focusing on the core functionalities of Linkdin: help
to build and nurture your network, amplify your message, Multi-media,Headshot.The goal of this
evaluation was to identify major usability flaws within the Linkdin interface through the
application of these eight heuristics:
1. Use easy and linguistic communication
2. Provide Feedback
3. Be consistent
4. Provide clearly marked exits
5. Provide shortcut
6. Prevent error.
7. Effective Menu/Command Structure
8. Minimize User’s Memory Load
The usability problems found from this evaluation are clustered into eight areas and are ranked
according to their severity and ease with which the problem can be solved. The most severe and
easiest to fix problems are:
1. Joining process is too lengthy and annoying
2. Inefficient color plan
3. Profile without delete request option
4. Withdrawing the request is bit difficult
5. Error while adding new contacts using registered email address.
6. Spam Messages
7. Linkdin Home Status.
8. Top Updates
9. Activity Status should mention in any case
10. Hidden and grayed out elements create confusion

Product Information
LinkedIn is a professional networking site. Essentially, it offer you a hub to host your
professional portfolio. It is a great recourse for connecting with professionals in your field and
creating a professional network for career development. You can use LinkedIn to display your
resume a place where they can send a potential employer to see their accomplishments and
skillset. Therefore, it is possible to lurk around LinkedIn for people in your area with skillsets
that you are looking for search for jobs, and enhance your professional reputation by posting
updates and interacting with other people. LinkedIn is free, but a subscription version called
LinkedIn Premium offers additional features like online classes and seminars, as well as insights
into who is searching for and viewing your profile. Through all this LinkedIn remains the central
node within the world’s professional network. LinkedIn can be downloaded from the CNET
Download.com

Target Population
 Greater than70 percentage of Linkedin users are from outside the US.
 46 million students and up to date college graduates on LinkedIn.
 There are 57% of male users and 43% female users on Linkedin.
 After US (167 million+), India (64 million+), China (49 million+), Brazil (41 million+),
and Great Britain (28 million+) has the very best number of users.
 24% of Millennials (18-24 years old) use LinkedIn.
 There are 87 million Millennials on LinkedIn with 11 million in decision-making
positions.
 The average income of a Linkedin user currently stands at $46,644 per annum.
 51% folks College Graduates use LinkedIn.
 90 million LinkedIn users are senior-level influencers and 63 million are in decision-
making positions.
 There are 17 million opinion leaders and 10 million C-Level executives on LinkedIn

Methodology
Heuristic evaluation is a usability engineering method for locating usability problems during an
interface design, thereby making them addressable and solvable as an area of an iterative design
process. It involves a touch set of expert evaluators who examine the interface and assess its
compliance with “heuristics,” or recognized usability principles. Nielsen and Molich, 1990
originally propose it, may be a discount method for quick, cheap, and straightforward evaluation
of the interface during a heuristic evaluation, a group of evaluators assess a designed interface
for compliance against an agreed set of principles. In heuristic evaluation, evaluators can
supplement sets of general design principles with additional heuristics that match the
merchandise category or its characteristics, as necessary. The amount of evaluators for each
project may vary.

Heuristic Use
Usability is to measure the ease-of-use in user-centered interaction designs be able to discuss
usability issues found on Linkedin. The aim of this inspection is to gauge the online site, to
debate the issues and propose the recommendations to reinforce the usability of interface design.
Below mentioned ten heuristics were used, that concentrate on the core functionality of
LinkedIn. The next highlights Nielsen’s nine heuristics:
 1 Use easy and linguistic communication
2 Provide Feedback
3 Be consistent
4 Provide clearly marked exits
5 Provide shortcut
6 Prevent error.
7 Effective Menu/Command Structure
8 Minimize User’s Memory Load

Prioritization of Problems
In order to usefully group the findings resulting from this heuristic evaluation process, we
clustered specific instances of heuristic violations into ten problem areas. To further
understand the impact of each of these problems, we estimated both its severity in terms of
usability principles and the ease with which the problem might be solved. Problem severity
ratings were impacted by the frequency with which the problem occurred, the ease with
which the user could overcome the problem, and the persistence of the problem—whether it
could be solved once or would bother the user every time a task was attempted. This resulted
in a dual rating for each problem found, which was used to prioritize the problem areas for
presentation in this report. The tables below define the severity and ease of fix rating systems
applied. Severity ranks are based on those defined by Jakob Nielsen (Severity ratings for
usability problems).

1. Joining process is too lengthy and annoying

Joining process is too annoying for user because it gets more than enough information of user for
joining its website. Understanding of website is not developed as well as it should be. As I have
entered the wrong information for my degree time duration but the site is accepting this
information. Another thing in joining is if the user enter wrong email mistakenly so there should
be option for going back but the site doesn’t provide any facility like this and the whole process
held at the last of joining process. This is the violation of visibility of system status and
flexibility and efficiency of use heuristic

Evidence
 Figure 1 Figure 2
Figure 1: not showing any semantic behavior to understand the degree program time
duration
Figure 2: email confirmation code receive at the end when the user has joined the website.
Recommendation
Joining process should be lemmatized only for the important information user should provide its
information.
At very initial state by the sematic behavior of website user should be provided with this
information that he/she has enter wrong email
2. Inefficient color plan
As showed in Figure, the textual style shade of content, buttons, and hyperlinks gave all through
Linkedin is light dark in shading which is exceptionally dull. Due to the light-colour text, the
user has to strain their eyes, making it difficult to read long posts; for users with low vision, this
issue is especially obvious. Moreover, same font colour has been used throughout the website to
display different content.. Because of this, it is intense for users to distinguish the contrast
between ordinary content, action buttons, and hyperlinks. It does not intuitively makes the client
click the hyperlinks and buttons since it looks like only a typical readable text. This violates
Heuristic #1, which states that simple and natural dialog should be used.  
Figure 2: Marked with color
Recommendation:
It is prescribed that the significant things should stand apart, for example, the title of the articles,
actions button, and hyperlinks. The font colour to be darker shade so clients can peruse it without
the strain on their eyes, headings should be enormous and bold. The font used for the action
buttons such as like, comment & share and hyperlinks should be assorted from the normal text so
that users can easily differentiate between items and perform their actions accordingly

3. Profile without delete request option

There is no option to delete the request on the main page of the person whom user sent the
request. There is just a text, which shows that request is still pending from that person’s side.
This is the violation of third heuristic.
Figure: It shows the pending button without cancel request even not showing
in the more option

4. Withdrawing the request is bit difficult

LinkedIn helps their members to build their professional network by sending and accepting
invitations to connect. However, the process to delete any wrong sent invitation is very
complicated, which is ambiguous to the users. The option to delete or withdraw the sent
invitations is hard to find for users in LinkedIn, which forces users to try several different
options before reaching to the correct destination. There is a button titled ‘Manage all’ which is
placed adjacent to the text field ‘Received invitation’ as shown. It is inside the received
invitation panel which makes the user think that this button only manages received requests,
however, ‘Manage all’ button is to manage all sent and received invitations.  Thus, the user never
clicks this button in the first place.
This violates heuristic #1 and 8, which states that a simple and natural dialogue should be used,
and memory load should be minimized.
Recommendation
Manage button should stand out so that users can identify it as the action button. Furthermore,
an option to delete the sent invitation should appear on the homepage of the user to whom it is
sent. This will provide users another option to quickly delete the request from that person’s main
page whom they sent the invitation. This will save a lot of user’s time as unnecessary navigation
trail is avoided and will provide them the straightforward way to perform their action.

4. Error while adding new contacts using registered email address

LinkedIn provides a functionality where users can use their stored contacts from their personal
email account to connect with them. To do this, users have to import their address book with the
provided email address and upon doing so, a new window pops up. This window has an option to
allow or deny the permission, which is imperative to complete the task. But, those options are
not visible and to make them visible, users need to maximize the window. Furthermost, there is
no scroll bar to indicate more options down the page. This is not an instinctive action and often
forces the users to try several options before reaching to the correct solution. This is violating
Heuristic #5, which states Provide feedback.

Recommendation
There could be several options to rectify this glitch. One could be, to align the content in such a
way that the permission buttons should be visible in the default window, which pops up. Another
recommendation is to provide a scrollbar so that users can easily scroll down and click on the
desired options. Yet another recommendation is to open the window in maximized size so that
the options are visible by default.
No option to complete the task

5. Spam Messages
Spam messages in my message box from different users who are otherwise never visible on
Linkedin. They send these mass messages, which are either very long, or not readable, or they
are not at all relevant for me.
Obviously, I report them as spam. However, that does not put an end to my pain. Just after a
couple days, the same users send me more spam because linked in spam filtering is flawed.
Violation of heuristic #8

Recommendation
LinkedIn should stop them by improving filtering spams. So that user will get confidence and
use and recommend this app without any fear

6. Linkdin Home Status

Linkdin show this status at the start of home page. Linkdin should take care and mention the
cross symbol for closing this window so that the user will close it.If Linkedin is so concerned
about user, then their backend system should be intelligent enough to know that if there message
is going unheard, they should stop showing it.Won’t that be the right thing for users.Vioaltion of
Heurestic#8.

Recommendation
Linkdin Should allocate one close button on right of this window as allocated pop up button
that will get bigger by clicking on it with full information and get small again by clicking on
it.So, that whenever user want he will close this window and whenever want get access to it.
7. Top Updates
There are two options: Top and Recent on home page. Mostly, Top posts are displayed on
Updates section. And strangely just a newly post message keeps hanging there for hours
together, ignoring other posts which have more likes or comments. Moreover, why can’t these
top updates keep scrolling down instead of sticking there like a poster. Violation of Heuristic 6
Recommendations
LinkedIn is must able to determine which post should be shared or how to mnaga load by using
load balancers so that single pic should not hang for hours.
8. Activity Status should be mention in any case
If someone will not perform any task, like sharing anything or not comment on any post. It’s
mean there activity status is zero but Linkedin will skip it’s activity heading until unless atleast
one activity is performed on it.Violation of Heurestic#3 and 8

Evidence

Figure 1: Without
zero performance,
activity status is
not showing even
a heading of it.
Figure 2: Showing activity status with a single shared post.

Recommendation:
Activity Status should also be shown as dashboard, interest etc in profile.So that user
interactivity with the application is getting more attractive.
10. Hidden and grayed out elements create confusion
Grayed out elements creates unnecessary confusion to users and may stop them from even
finishing the onboarding process. This is the violation of aesthetic and minimalist design
heuristic
Evidence

Figure 1: grayed and hidden material confuse the user for working for this website
Recommendation
Avoid graying out interactive elements and let users to decide what to do. Interactive elements
should also be put in expected locations.
Conclusion
There is much functionality on the LinkedIn platform, which aids us in achieving our tasks. But
most of the content is disorganized and this pattern is reflected throughout the layout. Despite
numerous changes and improvement, LinkedIn still needs improvement so that users can use the
application more efficiently. We highlighted several usability issues in their User-Interface. The
content of the website should be clear in terms, easy to navigate and important items should
stand out. For experienced users, it would be relatively easy to perform their trivial tasks but the
new users struggle due to complexities and usability issue in the interface design. The
recommended changes could be helpful in removing the issues mentioned and could also make
its user-interface more efficient, adaptable, and interactive. These are some of the observations
that I have on Linkedin. People who understand digital media know that these are serious user
experience (UX) flaws that exist on all social media sites including Facebook, Twitter, and
LinkedIn. Moreover, these networking sites are ignoring these flaws completely because they
offer their services free of charge to the users. In addition, most users do not understand the
online UX subtleties.As a result, the number of users on these sites may be mushrooming, but
they hardly ensure any value to the advertisers who want to display their ads on a social media
site, such as Linkedin. Thus, the pain persists – at least for serious users.