The primary objectives of the redesign were:

• Bring relevant information to the user rather than making them search for it.
• Reduce the amount of space devoted to navigation. Free-up space for page content.
• Bring the design more in line with the recently redesigned LinkedIn consumer site.
• Provide users with information about team members.
• Foster re-use of designs and code between the consumer and recruiter web sites.

The new LinkedIn Recruiter home page serves as a dashboard of relevant information important to the corporate recruiter. On the left is a list of projects – both private projects as well as shared team projects. In the center is a list of the the most recently received messages. Below that is a feed of recent team activity.

Corporate recruiters frequently work on teams. The new Team Activity module provides a feed of information about the activity of other team members working on shared projects. A user also sees their own activity in the feed.

On the right side of the home page are modules that provide status on things important to the recruiter. On the top is a summary of saved searches which highlights new results. Next is a summary of the jobs the recruiter has open. Below that is a status showed the amount of shared resources available, along with an easy way to request additional resources from the administrator.

LinkedIn Recruiter is an indispensable tool for thousands of corporate recruiters. We worked closely with our customers in designing the new version. First, we held in-person sessions where we listened to the needs of our users. As we designed the new version we showed it to a sample of our customers and iterated on the design based on their feedback.

A lot of enterprise software does not have the quality and ease-of-use of consumer software. Our goal was to change this by taking the best of what we have learned from the LinkedIn consumer site and adapting it to the needs of corporate users. The response from customers has been very positive. We are learning more every day and have lots of additional enhancements planned.

More information about the new LinkedIn Recruiter.

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.

• A new design for LinkedIn
• A new way to navigate LinkedIn

Yahoo! Buzz can highlight anything – a major news event, an intriguing video or image, or an interesting blog post – and instead of editors, real people vote and search for their favorite stories to determine the top rated content from across the Web. Yahoo! Buzz ranks the most popular content of the moment using a unique approach that combines consumer votes with search popularity to give a story a Buzz Score.

Stories with a high Buzz Score can be featured in the Today Module on the Yahoo! Front Page. This opens up the Yahoo! front page to the best content chosen by users as well as traditional content chosen by editors.

We worked very hard on Buzz and we hope you like it. Here’s what ReadWriteWeb had to say about us (view story).

Go to http://buzz.yahoo.com/ and try Yahoo! Buzz for yourself.

Not only is the new user experience less disruptive, the video loads in a fraction of the time it did with the old player. To see it in action, go to http://www.yahoo.com/. Sometimes there is a video available on the first tab, if not, click on the video tab and you will see a collection of the most popular videos of the day.