Conducted in-depth analysis of the end-to-end seller workflow to identify gaps and opportunities within LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Leveraged these insights to define key improvements, shaping opportunities that align with and contribute to the overall product strategy.
Workshop / Sprint
Sketch and wireframe
Interaction and prototype
Visual design
User research with UXR
1 designer
5 PMs
1 UXR
Design and research: 5 months
Successfully integrated into the product roadmap in 2023 and beyond
This design and research-led initiative brought together the Sales Navigator team and key stakeholders around critical insights, fostering alignment that ensured cohesive development and a seamless user experience. Many of the ideas generated from this project were also added to the product roadmap. Additionally, the problems identified sparked further discussions about product strategy within the Product team, shaping future development priorities.
Crystal is able to tackle very ambitious and ambiguous projects, and work her way through them by breaking down the problem and making a clear plan to meet various milestones. She is able to run workshops and get inputs from a large number of stakeholders in a short amount of time.
- Product leader, LinkedIn
Crystal is a very strong designer and I have thoroughly enjoyed my collaboration with her. I am thrilled that we get to continue to work together as we get into FY24 on what promises to be a very impactful improvement to the Sales Navigator workflow.
- Eng leader, LinkedIn
Would like to skip the design process? Check out the final design and recap directly.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a specialized tool designed for sales professionals. They leverage the platform to identify potential accounts and leads, receive personalized lead recommendations and insights, and reach out directly to prospects via InMail.
For instance, a sales representative might use Sales Navigator to identify key decision-makers within a specific industry and initiate conversations that could lead to valuable business opportunities.
As part of the 2022 Sales Intelligence Strategy, LinkedIn aimed to position Sales Navigator as the go-to intelligence solution for organizations. However, as new features were layered onto the platform, users encountered increasing friction, with workflows becoming cluttered and difficult to navigate. This resulted in:
- Duplicate task flows: Multiple, often redundant, ways to achieve the same outcomes, confusing users and hindering their efficiency.
- Low feature discoverability: Important features were not easily found or integrated into users' natural workflows, reducing their perceived value.
- Siloed development approaches: Different teams working independently led to a disjointed user experience, with no consistent approach to how new features fit into the overall product.
The UX team recognized the need to address the growing complexity of Sales Navigator's user experience. As the lead of this product, I aimed to:
- Gain a deeper understanding of sellers’ workflows, with and without Sales Navigator.
- Evaluate the fit of new features within those workflows.
- Identify barriers, gaps, and opportunities to guide the product’s strategic direction.
We conducted in-depth user research with 11 Sales Navigator users, consisting of both account-based sellers (9) and lead-based sellers (2). Each session was designed to uncover the nuances of their workflows and gather feedback on new concepts. The research process included:
We asked participants actively contributed by creating flowcharts of their sales workflows. This provided us with a high-level, visual understanding of how users approach their daily tasks, the tools they use, and where Sales Navigator fits (or doesn’t fit) into their process.
We also asked users to walkthrough and share their feedback on their Sales Navigator current key workflows (including some new surfaces). This allowed us to pinpoint moments of friction, such as redundant steps or underutilized features, and assess whether new ideas streamlined or complicated their experience.
Using the user journeys co-created with us during the Sales Navigator workflow UXR, I summarized and identified common patterns across different user segments. I then led workshops to review these findings and aligned them with cross-functional teams, ensuring we had a unified understanding and direction moving forward.
Through the research process, we identified four distinct journey maps based on different types of sellers: account-based, lead-based, farmers, hunters, and hybrid sellers. These journey maps revealed that a seller’s workflow is highly fluid and adaptable, with no strict sequence of actions. Sellers may experience multiple stages simultaneously, skip certain steps, or repeat them in cyclical patterns depending on their unique needs and strategies. This insight underscored the complexity of sales processes and the need for Sales Navigator to offer flexible, intuitive support that aligns with these varied workflows.
To effectively identify and prioritize problems, I began by mapping the user journey to the various surfaces within Sales Navigator. This allowed me to visualize where users interact with the platform, understand where key actions are performed, and identify gaps between what we expect users to do versus what they actually do in their sales processes.
Taking the insights from the previous user research and this mapping exercise, I uncovered 17 specific problems within the Sales Navigator workflow. Given the complexity and the constraints on time, it wasn’t feasible to tackle all of them at once.
To address this, the team came together to review each issue, and we voted to prioritize the top five problems that would have the greatest impact on improving the user experience. This collaborative approach ensured that we focused our efforts on the most critical challenges first, laying the foundation for a more strategic and targeted product development process.
After categorizing the identified issues, we separated them into user problems and business/product problems. Interestingly, the five problems we chose to solve were all business/product problems, meaning users weren’t using certain features as expected or weren’t finding value in them, which led to declining product metrics and unmet business goals.
Before jumping into solutions, we wanted to ensure that we stayed member-focused, delivering real user value to achieve true product success. To do this, we carefully reviewed these five issues, which primarily revolved around features or surfaces that users were neglecting. We focused on identifying the root causes of these problems by asking critical questions:
“How could this problem be impacting our users?”
“Why would users care about this?”
By understanding the user's perspective and how these problems affected their workflow, we formed "How Might We" statements for each issue. This approach helped us shift the focus from purely addressing business goals to solving the real pain points that users experience in their sales processes. It ensured that our solutions were not just about improving product metrics, but about aligning with users' actual needs and supporting their existing workflows.
After forming the "How Might We" (HMW) statements, I facilitated a few brainstorming session with the team to explore potential solutions. This collaborative approach allowed us to generate a wide range of creative ideas aimed at addressing the core user problems while also aligning with business goals.
After the brainstorming session, I synthesized the ideas and grouped them by common themes. I then led a team voting process to select the most impactful concepts.
Working closely with the PM and UXR teams, we prioritized the ideas based on feasibility and alignment with product goals. I quickly created wireframes to illustrate the top concepts, which were reviewed by stakeholders for feedback and approval.
If you’d like to learn more about the detailed problems and solutions came out of this project, let’s talk!
Based on the insights gathered, the key themes that emerged for these solutions are:
I also presented key learnings from this initiative to the entire team, providing valuable reminders for future product development. These insights will help guide our approach moving forward, ensuring we remain user-focused and aligned with strategic goals.
Understand users' circumstances and needs (ie: JTBD). Use journey mapping to better understand the context/circumstance/actions
Consider not only your JTBD related to the feature, but also facilitate and optimize the previous/next adjacent JTBD, and how the feature fits into the overall user experience
When suggesting actions, make sure it is done in the right context, be transparent on why it's recommended and make sure it benefits the users immediately
