A new way to navigate LinkedIn
January 6th, 2010
Recently, we launched a new site navigation design for LinkedIn. The first thing you’ll notice in the new design is that the old, persistent left-hand navigation area has been removed. All global navigation is in the top navigation bar. We did this in order to free up space for page content – information about you and your professional network.
Another thing you’ll notice is that the new global navigation bar takes up less vertical space. Page content is moved up higher on the page – less scrolling!
The global navigation bar
The global navigation bar is always available and provides convenient access to all LinkedIn services. Pass your mouse over the bar and you will see menus that provide quick access to the most popular LinkedIn features. For example, the Groups menu has links for finding and creating groups; it also has quick links for the groups you access the most often.
Local Navigation
When you are in an area of LinkedIn (such as Contacts or Groups) you see local navigation. The major sub areas are in tabs along the top of the page. If the page allows filtering of content (such as Discussions or Search Results) these options are shown on the left.
The redesign process
We began the redesign effort by analyzing 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.
On some pages, the new navigation can increase the amount of space available for page content by almost a third. In the coming weeks and months look for LinkedIn to provide continually improved and relevant content to occupy this space. Stay tuned.
For more information see the following.
