LinkedIn Female Graduate Anxiety - user research

BA DMC Major Project

Nov 2020

(dis)Connected Lives Us in 6 months - Project Document Report Team Members: Ana Cristina Quintero Ruiz QUI17514249 Christy Ho 18029839 Jemma Hussey HUS17518364 Yu Shan Hui (Yoann) 17527777

Team Roles

Yoann

Project Manager

Ana

Research (Manager)

Christy

Strategy & Analysis (Manager)

Jemma

Design (Manager)

Contents list:

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Project Brief

P. 4

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Project Research Raw Data Project Process

P. 6 P. 8

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Project Debrief

P. 10

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Project Presentation Interactive Activity

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Target Audience Understanding

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Pathology - Anxiety Chosen Social Media - Linkedin

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Research Methods and Insights

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Potential Remedy

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Project Future Improvement and Development

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Bibliography

Project Brief

Re-Writing the Brief

(dis)Connected Lives Digital Critique: Explore the digital realm through critical eyes.

Cultural Analysis: Discover the cultural effects of digital consumption.

Research Methods: Understand these effects on specific users through multiple research methods.

Design Thinking: Develop potential remedies through research synthesis and future forecasting.

Project Research Raw data

Research

Research Raw Data For more details please refer to our trello board: https://trello.com/b/YGb9KB5w/disconnected-lives

Digital Safari

Interview & Observation

Co-Research

Project Process

Project Process

Double diamond ●

Explore the conceptual domain using exploratory techniques

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Understanding what pathologies would caused by that

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Explore and understand potential target audience and social media platform

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Matching with potential pathology for further exploration

Dreaming Research method - Digital Safari

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Focus on understanding and finding female graduate or about graduate’s experience and frustrations by interview and observations

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Understanding Linkedin from inside out by observation and experiment

Awakening Research method - Interview & Observation

Creating potential remedy from target audience’s needs and pain points according to Linkedin.

Co-research workbook activities for testing and further understanding

Rising Research method - CoResearch

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Analysis and redesign remedy according to coresearch insights

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Prepare and share journey via immersive presentation

Acting

Project Debrief

Project Presentation Interactive Activity

Spin the Bottle How anxious can we make you feel?

Interactive Activity

Explanation

Explanation We took everyone’s picture in our class that we could find on LinkedIn and put them in one spinner. The people we couldn’t find, we maintained their privacy by not putting a picture up.

In the second spinner, we wrote potential outcomes (half good, half bad) that are inspired by, but are an exaggeration of LinkedIn notifications.

The idea is to spin both and match a person to an unpredictable outcome.

Instructions

Spin the Spinner, see where you land, whatever the outcome, your future is in our hands . . .

Activity

Students: https://pickerwheel.com/tools/random-image-generator/

Outcomes: https://pickerwheel.com

(Only person who created the spinner can view it)

Spinner Screenshots

Why we just did what we did

The intention for our Spin the bottle was to help you understand the anxiety that new female graduates feel when using LinkedIn to job search and network for the first time.

Their future is uncertain and their anxiety is high, LinkedIn perpetuates this by having unclear job search functions, unnerving notifications and cluttered ‘social media-like’ feed. Want to experience finding a job and planning your future through LinkedIn? Try spinning a bottle on all the possible futures in the world.

Their anxiety is perpetuated by the cycle of looking and not finding, feeling isolated whilst never been more ‘connected’ and comparing themselves to seniors far above their current capabilities.

Graduate Experience

“Postgrad depression is underreported because graduation is like motherhood: culturally seen as a seemingly joyful time, which makes it even more shameful for someone to admit that it’s not”.

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Psychologist, Julie Fraga

https://socialmedia.umich.edu/blog/postgrad-scaries-managing-the-stress-of-life-after-college

Why ‘Female’ Graduates?

It is now a well-known fact that gender inequality is a significant problem in society, especially in the workplace.

LinkedIn Gender Insights Report

Women are 16% less likely than Men to apply to a job after viewing it. ...

More importantly Women are more likely to feel they need to meet 100% of the criteria while Men usually apply after meeting about 60%. https://business.linkedin.com/talent-solutions/blog/diversity/2019/how-women-find-jobs-genderreport

User Persona

Alexandra Kelley

Preferred Media: Instagram, The Dots Goals: She wants to find a permanent position in the area that she is passionate about despite Covid-19 disruptions.

Frustrations: there is a lot of opportunities on the market, however, she couldn’t find any that match to her interests. And seeing others getting jobs that worry her more.

Age: 23 Occupation: New Graduate Location: London, UK Archetype: Creative Thinker

Personality: Introvert Extrovert Sensing Intuition Thinking Feeling Judging Perceiving

Brands:

Bio: Alexandra is a fresh graduated design student in 2020, she is passionate about sustainability and ethics design. She has a strong belief in social change to create a positive future. She desires to get into the service design sector and she constantly attends related events. And she would connect to all speakers that she like on LinkedIn for hoping to keep updated and get first hand news in that field.

User Persona

Tiffany West

Preferred Media: Whatsapp, Youtube Goals: She wants to build a network that will help her get a job she feels passionate about after graduating.

Frustrations: Doesn’t know how to find a new career path. Doesn’t understand how to use LinkedIn when she doesn’t have a clear direction.

Age: 21 Occupation: About to Graduate Location: California, US Archetype: Social Butterfly

Personality: Introvert Extrovert Sensing Intuition Thinking Feeling Judging Perceiving

Brands:

Bio: Tiffany is about to graduate from Law school in California, however she doesn’t feel so passionate about Law anymore and feels uncertain about her future. In her spare time she likes to travel, volunteer and write and she wonders if it is possible to get a job doing any of those things. She has a very vibrant social life with lots of friends and close family, which takes up alot of her time, this has lately been a way for her to distract herself from her worries about the future.

Tiffany West

*Warning!* Pathology Detected…

It seems like you are experiencing a lot of...

Anxiety

Pathology Social anxiety is a fear of being revealed and judged as somehow deficient. And social media pushes all those buttons perfectly.

Technology takes away uncertainty but decreases our ability to deal with uncertainty in real life.

Technology and social media allows us to avoid the negative emotions that people make us feel but ultimately makes us more isolated as we don’t learn to deal with them.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blo g/how-be-yourself/201803/howtechnology-makes-us-anxious

Platform

Why LinkedIn?. . .

Why LinkedIn?

After understanding our pathology and target audience, we understood that LinkedIn is a social network, disguised as a professional platform, that is highly used by recently graduated females.

By examining this platform we are able to understand the anxiety that comes from job searching, networking and viewing other’s success, or apparent success.

LinkedIn Technology

LinkedIn users paid for a premium identity that represented no true value better than their own.

As long as you pay $ 29.95 a month, you’ll get top billing, even when you don’t deserve it.

LinkedIn makes it easy for employers to know when job seekers have shelled out cash to get their resume seen by placing a premium badge next to their name, potentially embarrassing the user.

Research

Research Methods Method 1

Method 2

Method 3

Digital Safari with

1-to-1 Interview

Co-Research

an Emotional

and Observation

Workbook

Affordance Analysis

Research

Research Ethics

Research Ethics *Disclaimer* We carried out primary research with full permission of the participants for their information to be used in this project.

We do not claim any secondary resources to be of our own and will include links to their sources where necessary.

Research Method 1

Digital Safari with an emotional affordance analysis Methodology After deciding on Anxiety as a Pathology, we outlined 3 LinkedIn features and analysed the emotions they made us feel. This was to help us understand if these features caused us anxiety.

Feature 1

Feature 2

Feed

Notifications

Feature 3

Profile Views and Premium Membership

Feature 1:

Feed

Surprised: There is a new story feature

Entertaining: someone posted a meme

Proud: a connection has a new job

Positive Emotions

Shy: Should I connect with them?

Neutral Emotions

Negative Emotions

Bored: The story feature is kind of lame

Uneasy: their suggestions and too accurate

Confused: why do random companies appear on the feed

Jealous: a connection has a new job

By analysing the feed we understood how many emotions our target audience and probably any user feels in just 1 minute. This up and down is not healthy and can potentially trigger anxiety.

Feature 2:

Notifications

Positive Emotions

Intrigued: “feeling uninspired? Try these techniques to help yourself out of a rut”

Excited: “one person viewed your profile...”

Interesting: “x connection shared a post”

Neutral Emotions

Negative Emotions

Intimidated: “don’t forget to apply for x job you saved las week”

Indifferent: “x company shared a post” Stressed: “Daily rundown: retailers scramble to bag sales”

Annoyed: “one person viewed your profile… try premium to see who it is”

After analysing notifications, it was clear that most where not relevant and had the tendency to cause negative emotions. Although, regardless of the emotion they caused, they felt very personal through the use of personal pronouns like, you, your, yourself.

Feature 3: Profile Views and Premium Membership

Positive Emotions

Accomplishment: Do my views equal success?

Confidence: people must think I am interesting if they are looking at my profile

Insightful: What type of recruiters or companies are looking at my profile and how can I potentialise this

Neutral Emotions

Negative Emotions

Uneasy: to what degree does this compromise privacy?

Self-conscious: what do other think of me?

Pressure: do I have to buy premium?

Harassed: Why do I see premium ads everywhere?

From the profile visits and premium features, we understood this is capitalised and capitalises on curiosity, but feeling uneasy, pressured and self-conscious come as a cost when not buying the extra feature.

Research Method 1

Affordance Analysis Insights

Summary

From the emotion graphs, it was very evident the fluctuating feeling felt when using LinkedIn, this itself made us anxious.

At this stage we concluded that, how the platform is built, intrinsically generates curiosity that comes at the cost of anxiety.

Research Method 2

Interview with Observation Methodology

After reaching the digital safari’s conclusion, we expanded our research by interviewing and observing LinkedIn users from our target audience to understand if they experienced the same kind of anxiety as us when using LinkedIn. We interviewed 3 freshly graduated students from different countries and courses to get a range of experiences and perspectives.

Interview 1

“I feel happy, it is nice to see that people are accomplishing what they want in life.

Obviously, when you see someone that has graduate in the same uni as me and they already have a job and I haven’t, it puts pressure and you want to achieve that as soon as possible because if that person has been able to do it why haven’t you? What haven’t you done correctly?

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Female student graduated 2020, Colombia

Interview 2

“I am willing to apply for jobs when less people have completed it. But if more people complete it that would make me anxious because of the competition” “LinkedIn is harder to use in terms of job searching, I am not able to filter out entry level or junior positions”.

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Female student graduated 2020, UK

Interview 3

“Should I add more people to my network?” *Rapidly skims through the whole app and is irritated by the lack of relevant content*

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Female student graduating 2021, USA

Research Method 2

Interview with Observation Insights

Summary

After interviewing our candidates and observing their use of LinkedIn, it was evident that they too felt a wide array of emotions. Even if the platform made them feel insecure through comparison, they still saw it as a relevant tool for connecting with others and broadening their professional network.

Research Method 3

Co-Research Workbook Methodology To narrow down our research and gather opinions into how LinkedIn can be used for good, we decided to develop short workbooks to send to our target audience and facilitate their completion in some cases.

Research Ethics Honesty through facilitation, consent and privacy.

Our Questions

The workbook consisted of these 3 exercises: 1.

If you only had 5 minutes to be productive on LinkedIn before not being able to use it for a month, what would you do?

1.

Brain Dump - In 5 minutes, write as many ideas as possible of how you would improve LinkedIn?

1.

If anxiety caused by LinkedIn is our pathology, which remedy would you like to see implemented?

6 Female Graduates/Pre-Graduates participated

Workbook Template

Exercise 1 - Productivity

Exercise 1 - Insights

We noticed people said they would do much more than 5 minutes would allow.

But they all had in common that they would look for jobs, save them and expand their network.

This allowed us to see what our user prioritises on LinkedIn and what to maintain when coming up with our remedy: the possibility of looking for jobs and expanding a personal network

Exercise 2 - Brain Dump

Exercise 2 - Insights

Not surprisingly, everyone had different ways of improving LinkedIn. Everyone wanted to tailor LinkedIn to their needs, some wanted more precise job openings while others wanted less ads.

Tailoring and personalising features within LinkedIn emerged as the major preferences of our user. This will help us identify needs to decide a suitable remedy.

Exercise 3 - Remedy

Exercise 3 - Insights

From the 4 remedy options we gave the responders, 3 voted for Authenticity, 2 for Etiquette and 1 for Detox.

This was an important insight that will help us further identify the emotional needs of our user that will lead us onto our solution, effectively meeting those needs.

Research Method 3

Co-Research Workbook Insights

Summary

The workbook was a useful tool in helping us work closer with our target user to identify what their positive motivations towards LinkedIn are in the form of opportunities for change. This forms the basis for our remedy and design solutions.

Research

Research Summary

So what is the Remedy?

Summary

What do Female Graduates need from (Need Conclusion) LinkedIn to reduce their anxiety?

Formulating a solution

Identifying Needs

Identifying Needs

As discovered in our final co-research exercise where we asked our users to choose remedies that they believed would benefit them, the three most significant remedies, in order of importance were; Authenticity, Etiquette and Detox.

Our task is to now understand the themes and ideas around these remedies that potentially translate into practical solutions.

Identifying Needs

Community

Personalisation

Values Authenticity

Mentoring Humanisation

Personality

Filtering

Etiquette

Care

Creativity

Guidelines

Informality

Limiting

Detox

Dissociation

Minimalism/ Essentialism

How might LinkedIn help resolve feelings of anxiety in emerging female professionals?

Formulating a solution

Re-Framing the Question:

Re-Framing the Question

The previous ‘How Might We?’ question generally defines the problem we want to solve, however, through our breadth of research we discovered specific ways in which LinkedIn causes anxiety for our user. Therefore, the following ‘How Might We?’ statement helps us more directly target the problem to create a better remedy.

How might we adapt a balance in the professional and social features of LinkedIn to avoid feelings of anxiety amongst emerging female professionals?

Formulating a solution

Potential Remedy

Potential Remedies

Introductory feature to help facilitate and guide new members / new graduates in their LinkedIn user journey.

Potential Remedy

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Humanised language

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Transparency (Authenticity)

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Helpful tips (Etiquette)

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Directly addressing to user, with personal pronouns (Personalisation)

Future Improvement and Development ●

Benchmarking to compare alternative networking platforms such as; Otta, Handshake, The Dots, for an indepth understanding of LinkedIn’s current market position.

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Look into the specifics of female experience, do all females feel the same way? Also compare with male experience to further evidence female experience.

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Are people using linkedin features or are they finding their own ways to use it? To determine whether linkedin needs a re-design or a whole new platform needs to be developed.

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Further explore the idea of mentoring through LinkedIn, which could create reassurance in female graduates.

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Look into trends - such as feminism in the workplace - companies want to be more inclusive by bringing in female employees. This in order to explore opportunities for LinkedIn to promote these trends through their platform and recommend potential female employees to companies.

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Broader glossary of terms on the word anxiety to have an in-depth understanding of user’s needs and give more grounding to our project.

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Forbes (2017) 6 ways social me media affects our mental health. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2017/06/30/a-run-down-of-social-medias-effects-on-our-mentalhealth/?sh=6b5f0ee02e5a (Accessed: 2/11/2020).

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Ignatova, M. (2019) New report: women apply to fewer jobs than men, but are more likely to get hired. Available at: https://business.linkedin.com/talent-solutions/blog/diversity/2019/how-womenfind-jobs-gender-report (Accessed: 2/11/2020).

OCD Center of Los Angeles (2010) Reassurance Seeking in OCD and Anxiety. Available at: https://ocdla.com/reassurance-seeking-ocd-anxiety-1952 (Accessed: 2/11/2020).

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Psychology Today (2018) Why it's OK to seek reassurance . Available at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/intimacy-path-toward-spirituality/201808/why-its-ok-seek-reassurance (Accessed: 2/11/2020).

Tarafadr, M et al (2019) Explaining the link between technostress and technology addition for social networking sites: A study of distraction as a coping behaviour. Information Systems Journal, Volume 30 Issue 1. DOI:https://doi-org.arts.idm.oclc.org/10.1111/isj.12253 The Guardian (2017) LinkedIn is the worst of social media. Should I delete my account? Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2017/jun/09/linkedin-is-the-worst-of-social-media-shouldi-delete-my-account (Accessed: 3/11/2020).

The Washington Post (2017) There's such a thing as post-graduate depression. I know: I had it. Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/theres-such-a-thing-as-postgraduation-depression-i-know-i-had-it/2017/08/04/4d163c6a-618d-11e7-a4f7-af34fc1d9d39_story.html (Accessed: 28/10/2020).

University of Michigan (2020) Postgrad Scaries: Managing the stress of life after college . Available at: https://socialmedia.umich.edu/blog/postgrad-scaries-managing-the-stress-of-life-aftercollege/ (Accessed: 28/10/2020).