LinkedIn Polls : Review
LinkedIn recently (re)launched its polls feature and has been trending since then. With everyone trying their hands on it, I did too. I observed LinkedIn polls from an author and a voter’s perspective as a part of a challenge and came up with some insights and improvements.
Polls are done to get people’s opinions on things. The audience is given a few choices to select from, against the question being asked. Once the author of the poll has had enough count of votes received, then he/she can go ahead and analyze the result. Based on the results,
Problem Statement
Analyzing LinkedIn Polls to come up with design and feature enhancements in the current version.
Target Users
- Creator of the poll (Author)
- Voter on the poll
Metric
- User Engagement
- Usability
What do we know about LinkedIn Polls
From an author’s perspective :
· Has an option to write a caption for the poll.
· Can add poll’s question and it’s options ( 2 being the min and 4 being the max) and select the poll duration.
· Pretty much looks like a linkedin post with a box at the bottom which shows the actual poll.
· Can not edit poll’s questions and options but can edit caption.
· Receives passive notification when someone votes.
· Can see detailed and summarized version of the results.
· Can also vote himself/herself and undo as well.
· How many people have already voted and time left before it closes ( same for both author and voter)
· Like and comment on the post.
From a voter’s perspective :
· Select one of the options and vote if the poll hasn’t closed. Is able to undo and re-vote.
· Can see how many people have already voted and time left before it closes ( same for both author and voter)
· Able to see the result percentage.
· Like comment and share the post.
Poll Screens to understand it better
Voter Screens:
Author Screens:
Observations
From an author’s perspective :
Passive notifications from poll’s engagement was the best part. It could get annoying if the author is notified every time a user votes.
From a voter’s perspective :
1. Look and feel of the poll post was very much authentic to a normal [in] post, so that was a plus point. User doesn’t need to learn anything new.
2. A box highlight for the poll separates the poll from other distractions in the overall post, which is again a great experience.
Improvements
- Poll Duration
Setting the poll duration looks restricted. Author is only able select one of the few durations which are pre-set by LinkedIn. Ability to choose a more flexible time will add great value. Left screenshot is what LinkedIn offers, right one would be the improvement suggested.
2. Poll Closing Time
Once the poll is created, there shouldn’t be an option of editing it, because then it will lose the real essence of it. I want to take time and explain this using an analogy since I spent much time to understand why one shouldn’t be allowed to edit the poll once created.
Imagine you go out for voting on election day and after you vote, list of candidates gets updated and your most favorite candidate is added to the list. How will it make you feel? When a polling is done, same options should be available for the complete audience, they deserve fair and equal chances.
Though one thing which I feel that could be allowed for editing is the poll end time. This will enable the author to end the poll early than the specified time in case if he/she has got enough responses and they’re running short on time. The poll post could come as a warning that the author might close the poll early than the said time.
3. Notification when poll closes
A notification asking the author to take an action on either of the 2 items –
o Share the final results with the audience.
o Analyze/View the final results.
This review was done on 7 June 2020. Any changes/updates on LinkedIn Polls after this date are not considered.
