The New LinkedIn UI Rocks !

I don’t now how upset you have been over the last year, seeing LinkedIn adding more and more functionality, trying to keep up with social media (adding status updates) and real time web (syncing twitter with LinkedIn) and its competitors (adding pictures to profiles). And by doing this, the User Interface got more and more disorganized and ended up to be a clutter.

I used LinkedIn less and less because I couldn’t get use to all the different navigation bars and different ways to navigate around. All the new functionality that had been added ended up somewhere in that huge black hole.

It was time for a redesign. Kevin Bury, the ‚Principal User Experience Designer at LinkedIn, explains in his blog post the reason behind the change

We began the redesign effort several months ago by analysing how people use LinkedIn.  We looked at what features people use the most and pored over several years of data from usability research on the site. Armed with this information we began doing design explorations of how to better organize LinkedIn features, and make them more convenient to find and use.

We factored into this effort additional features we knew were coming. We narrowed down the designs to a few candidates we felt were strong contenders. We then prototyped these designs and had users perform tasks with the prototypes in the usability lab. We went through numerous iterations until we arrived at a design we felt worked the best.  One of the key features of the new design is that it allows much more space for page content – information about you and your professional network.

and the new design elements

• A global navigation bar at the top of the page that provides convenient access to all LinkedIn services.
• Simplified local navigation within each of the LinkedIn areas (Profile, Contacts, Groups, etc.).
• More room available for page content. Less scrolling.
• cleaner, less-cluttered look.

The new User Interface is live and I must say after the first look and feel, it ROCKS!. Far easier to navigate through the site and the elements used are more common to what is out there on the web. More room and more space to breath. Thanks