Remember when LinkedIn actually helped your career? As UX consultants, we're hearing the same frustration from professionals everywhere: LinkedIn has transformed from an essential networking tool into what many are calling an "anxiety machine."
With over 900 million users but plummeting satisfaction rates, something has gone seriously wrong. Let's diagnose what happened—and what UX design agencies and product strategists can learn from LinkedIn's missteps.
LinkedIn launched with a clear, focused promise: professional networking made simple. The platform offered a clean interface centered on three core functions:
It was like a digital Rolodex—but better. You could see not just your connections, but the web of people they knew. Recruiters had a field day. Candidates found opportunities. The platform had a clear purpose and executed it brilliantly.
As product design consultants, we often reference early LinkedIn as a case study in focused product strategy. It understood its users' jobs-to-be-done and delivered exactly what they needed, nothing more.
Fast forward to today, and LinkedIn feels unrecognizable. The shift began after Microsoft's acquisition, when the platform started mimicking engagement tactics from Facebook and Twitter. What was once signal became noise.
The transformation is stark. LinkedIn has become a platform where:
UX design agencies in Chicago and across the country are seeing the impact firsthand. Recruiters now message designers asking them to share job posts because those posts get lost in the algorithmic chaos. Think about that: the platform built for recruiting now requires workarounds to make recruiting effective.
As UX consulting firms specializing in product strategy, we've identified where LinkedIn's user experience has fundamentally broken down:
Want to connect with someone at a networking event? Here's LinkedIn's solution:
Three clicks to access the platform's core networking function. At networking events—where instant connection should be prioritized—this creates unnecessary friction.
Compare this to Apple Pay or Google Pay, which understand context and prioritize speed. LinkedIn should detect when users are at networking events (they have the location data) and surface the QR code immediately. Better yet, integrate with device wallets or enable voice activation: "Hey Siri, show my LinkedIn QR code."
This is the kind of strategic UX thinking that fractional design officers bring to product teams—understanding context and optimizing for actual user workflows.
Here's a scenario every job seeker knows: You're applying through Greenhouse, Workday, or another ATS system. You sign in using LinkedIn. Then the application asks you to manually enter your LinkedIn profile URL.
Why?
If you're a UX design agency working with HR tech, this is the integration you'd prioritize on day one. The data is right there. The authentication happened. Why force manual data entry?
LinkedIn should either acquire these ATS platforms or work aggressively on seamless integrations. The current experience trains users to distrust the platform's utility.
LinkedIn's algorithm now rewards controversy and engagement bait—the exact opposite of what professional networking requires. The platform has chosen metrics over mission.
When recruiters struggle to get their job postings seen, the core value proposition collapses. Product design consultants understand this fundamental principle: engagement metrics mean nothing if they don't serve user goals.
LinkedIn has added:
Meanwhile, basic professional networking features remain buried or broken. This is textbook feature bloat—what happens when product teams lose the ability to say "no."
A fractional UX expert would help leadership identify which features actually serve the platform's mission and which ones dilute it. LinkedIn needs someone with the authority to cut.
Picture this: A tech professional gets laid off. They update their status to "Open to Work." LinkedIn knows this person just lost their income.
One week later, LinkedIn serves them an ad for a Bentley.
This isn't just bad targeting—it's a fundamental misunderstanding of context and user state. LinkedIn sits on massive amounts of professional data. They should be the best at contextual, relevant advertising. Instead, they're treating their platform like every other ad-serving social network.
Design agencies understand that good UX extends to advertising. Ads should feel helpful, not insulting or oblivious to user circumstances.
As UX consulting firms specializing in product strategy, we've identified where LinkedIn's user experience has fundamentally broken down:
Want to connect with someone at a networking event? Here's LinkedIn's solution:
Three clicks to access the platform's core networking function. At networking events—where instant connection should be prioritized—this creates unnecessary friction.
Compare this to Apple Pay or Google Pay, which understand context and prioritize speed. LinkedIn should detect when users are at networking events (they have the location data) and surface the QR code immediately. Better yet, integrate with device wallets or enable voice activation: "Hey Siri, show my LinkedIn QR code."
This is the kind of strategic UX thinking that fractional design officers bring to product teams—understanding context and optimizing for actual user workflows.
Here's a scenario every job seeker knows: You're applying through Greenhouse, Workday, or another ATS system. You sign in using LinkedIn. Then the application asks you to manually enter your LinkedIn profile URL.
Why?
If you're a UX design agency working with HR tech, this is the integration you'd prioritize on day one. The data is right there. The authentication happened. Why force manual data entry?
LinkedIn should either acquire these ATS platforms or work aggressively on seamless integrations. The current experience trains users to distrust the platform's utility.
LinkedIn's algorithm now rewards controversy and engagement bait—the exact opposite of what professional networking requires. The platform has chosen metrics over mission.
When recruiters struggle to get their job postings seen, the core value proposition collapses. Product design consultants understand this fundamental principle: engagement metrics mean nothing if they don't serve user goals.
LinkedIn has added:
Meanwhile, basic professional networking features remain buried or broken. This is textbook feature bloat—what happens when product teams lose the ability to say "no."
A fractional UX expert would help leadership identify which features actually serve the platform's mission and which ones dilute it. LinkedIn needs someone with the authority to cut.
Picture this: A tech professional gets laid off. They update their status to "Open to Work." LinkedIn knows this person just lost their income.
One week later, LinkedIn serves them an ad for a Bentley.
This isn't just bad targeting—it's a fundamental misunderstanding of context and user state. LinkedIn sits on massive amounts of professional data. They should be the best at contextual, relevant advertising. Instead, they're treating their platform like every other ad-serving social network.
Design agencies understand that good UX extends to advertising. Ads should feel helpful, not insulting or oblivious to user circumstances.
So what happened? As UX consultants in Nashville, we see this pattern repeatedly in our work with companies across industries.
The trajectory mirrors what happened at Sears. Operations-focused leadership prioritizes quarterly metrics and efficient execution over innovation and user-centered design. The thinking goes: "Home Depot is successful, so let's copy Home Depot's email campaigns."
But copying competitors ignores what makes your product unique. It abandons the specific user needs that brought customers to your platform in the first place.
Sears copied competitors. Sears is now out of business.
LinkedIn is copying social media platforms. LinkedIn's user satisfaction is plummeting.
The problem often stems from leadership that lacks product vision. Without a fractional design officer or senior UX strategist with authority, product teams accumulate features without strategic filtering.
Every stakeholder's pet feature gets built. Every trend gets copied. The platform becomes everything to everyone—which means it excels at nothing.
This is why UX design agencies emphasize the importance of strategic product thinking at the leadership level. Someone needs the authority and vision to say: "This doesn't serve our mission. We're not building it."
As UX consulting firms focused on product strategy, here's how we'd approach fixing LinkedIn:
Audit every feature against core user goals:
If the answer is no, cut it or deprioritize it aggressively.
LinkedIn should be the smartest platform about professional context:
This is the strategic thinking that product design consultants bring—designing for actual user contexts, not abstract engagement metrics.
LinkedIn experimented with games, but they missed the point entirely. Gamification isn't about adding Wordle clones to your platform.
True gamification means making core workflows more engaging:
A UX design agency could design a gamified recruiting experience that's actually fun and productive—not a distraction from the platform's purpose.
This should be embarrassingly simple:
LinkedIn needs to decide: Are they a professional networking platform or a generic social media site?
If they're staying true to their mission, they need:
The future of professional networking is seamless integration with hiring workflows. LinkedIn should either:
This is strategic product thinking—understanding adjacent markets and building competitive moats.
So what happened? As UX consultants in Nashville, we see this pattern repeatedly in our work with companies across industries.
The trajectory mirrors what happened at Sears. Operations-focused leadership prioritizes quarterly metrics and efficient execution over innovation and user-centered design. The thinking goes: "Home Depot is successful, so let's copy Home Depot's email campaigns."
But copying competitors ignores what makes your product unique. It abandons the specific user needs that brought customers to your platform in the first place.
Sears copied competitors. Sears is now out of business.
LinkedIn is copying social media platforms. LinkedIn's user satisfaction is plummeting.
The problem often stems from leadership that lacks product vision. Without a fractional design officer or senior UX strategist with authority, product teams accumulate features without strategic filtering.
Every stakeholder's pet feature gets built. Every trend gets copied. The platform becomes everything to everyone—which means it excels at nothing.
This is why UX design agencies emphasize the importance of strategic product thinking at the leadership level. Someone needs the authority and vision to say: "This doesn't serve our mission. We're not building it."
As UX consulting firms focused on product strategy, here's how we'd approach fixing LinkedIn:
Audit every feature against core user goals:
If the answer is no, cut it or deprioritize it aggressively.
LinkedIn should be the smartest platform about professional context:
This is the strategic thinking that product design consultants bring—designing for actual user contexts, not abstract engagement metrics.
LinkedIn experimented with games, but they missed the point entirely. Gamification isn't about adding Wordle clones to your platform.
True gamification means making core workflows more engaging:
A UX design agency could design a gamified recruiting experience that's actually fun and productive—not a distraction from the platform's purpose.
This should be embarrassingly simple:
LinkedIn needs to decide: Are they a professional networking platform or a generic social media site?
If they're staying true to their mission, they need:
The future of professional networking is seamless integration with hiring workflows. LinkedIn should either:
This is strategic product thinking—understanding adjacent markets and building competitive moats.
Since he personally has no time or social media experience to curate an online presence for it, EVE has helped to start the foundation for an online following onInstagram and Facebook to reach customers Faraj would previously have missed out on.
It is important to recognize that social media marketing is becoming the new norm. While the start up of a social media strategy can be overwhelming, it doesn’t have to be.
While you focus on your passion of running your business, EVE is here to focus on our passion of helping you navigate the social media world and digital business.
Since he personally has no time or social media experience to curate an online presence for it, EVE has helped to start the foundation for an online following onInstagram and Facebook to reach customers Faraj would previously have missed out on.
It is important to recognize that social media marketing is becoming the new norm. While the start up of a social media strategy can be overwhelming, it doesn’t have to be.
While you focus on your passion of running your business, EVE is here to focus on our passion of helping you navigate the social media world and digital business.
LinkedIn's struggles illuminate a truth that fractional UX experts and UX consultants see constantly:
When you prioritize engagement metrics over user value, you eventually lose both.
We've seen this pattern with Craigslist, Myspace, Digg, and countless other platforms that lost their way. LinkedIn is following the same trajectory.
Whether you're building a B2B platform, a consumer app, or internal enterprise software, LinkedIn's failures offer critical lessons:
Your primary user workflows should be the easiest things to access. If users need three clicks to accomplish their main goal, you're training them to go elsewhere.
Design agencies know that information architecture and navigation hierarchy directly reflect product strategy. What you make accessible reveals what you actually value.
Generic experiences fail. Users have different needs in different contexts. LinkedIn at a networking event should function differently than LinkedIn during a job search or casual browsing.
This is where UX design agencies excel—conducting research to understand contextual needs and designing adaptive experiences.
Every new feature carries costs:
Unless a feature directly serves your mission, say no. This requires courage and strategic thinking—exactly what fractional design officers provide.
What works for Facebook doesn't work for LinkedIn. What works for Amazon doesn't work for your e-commerce site. What works for your competitor might not work for your specific user base.
Product design consultants help companies identify their unique value and lean into it rather than becoming a mediocre copy of someone else.
LinkedIn's QR code problem suggests they're not regularly observing users in real-world contexts. If they attended networking events and watched people struggle through the connection flow, the solution would be obvious.
This is foundational UX practice: observe real users in real contexts, identify friction, and eliminate it.
At UX consulting firms like ours, we believe in "positive conflict"—the kind where stakeholders and designers care deeply enough to challenge assumptions and hash out the right solution together.
LinkedIn needs this. They need product leaders who can push back on engagement metrics that undermine the mission. They need designers who can say "this feature doesn't serve our users" even when it might please advertisers. They need researchers who can show leadership the disconnect between platform metrics and user satisfaction.
This requires:
It's uncomfortable. It requires ego-checking and data-driven humility. But it's how great products stay great.
LinkedIn sits on an enormous goldmine: 900 million user profiles, billions of data points about professional trajectories, direct feedback from users about what they need.
Instead of mining this gold, they're chasing engagement metrics that work for social media platforms with entirely different missions.
This is true for most companies. Your users are telling you exactly what they need through:
UX design agencies specialize in extracting these insights, validating them through research, and turning them into strategic product improvements.
Most companies have the data they need. They're just not listening—or they're listening to engagement metrics instead of user needs.
LinkedIn isn't doomed. They have massive advantages: an established user base, rich data, brand recognition, and network effects that create significant barriers to competition.
But they need to make fundamental changes:
This transformation requires the kind of strategic product thinking that experienced UX consultants provide. It requires user research, strategic planning, and the courage to make hard decisions.
As UX consultants in Nashville who attend networking events weekly, we hear these frustrations constantly:
"I dread opening LinkedIn now. It used to be useful, now it's just noise."
"Recruiters can't find me, but I see a dozen inspirational posts about how someone's grandmother taught them about leadership."
"Why do I need to play games on a professional platform? I'm here to find work or hire people, not solve puzzles."
"The connection process at events is embarrassingly bad. I end up just asking for business cards instead."
These aren't edge cases. This is the mainstream user experience. And it's driving professionals to explore alternatives like Welcome to the Jungle, Built In Chicago, and other emerging platforms that focus on core professional networking needs.
LinkedIn's struggles represent a broader trend we'll continue exploring in future posts: what happens when platforms abandon their core purpose in pursuit of generic engagement metrics.
We'll examine:
As design agencies working with companies across Nashville, Chicago, Detroit, and beyond, we see these patterns repeatedly. The companies that thrive maintain clarity about their purpose. The ones that struggle chase trends and metrics without strategic grounding.
The LinkedIn case study illustrates exactly why companies need strategic UX design agencies.
Here's what we bring:
We help leadership define and maintain focus on core user needs, even when stakeholders push for trendy features or engagement-optimizing content.
We bring actual user data—through research, testing, and behavioral analysis—to product decisions, preventing the kind of tone-deaf experiences that plague LinkedIn.
As UX consulting firms, we can push back on bad ideas without political consequences. We're your voice of reason, backed by data and strategic thinking.
We've seen these patterns before. We know the warning signs. We can help you avoid the pitfalls that have trapped platforms like LinkedIn.
We don't just provide strategy—we can design, prototype, and test solutions. We turn insights into actionable improvements.
Whether you're building a new platform, scaling an existing product, or trying to refocus a product that's lost its way, the principles remain the same:
If your product is showing signs of losing its way—or if you want to avoid LinkedIn's mistakes entirely—it's time to bring strategic UX thinking to your product leadership.
That's where UX design agencies like ours come in. We help you diagnose what's wrong, identify what matters, and build experiences that serve real user needs.
Because in 2026, the platforms that win won't be the ones with the highest engagement metrics. They'll be the ones that never forgot why users showed up in the first place.
Struggling with product strategy or platform direction? As experienced UX consultants, we help companies refocus on what matters: delivering real value to users.
Whether you need strategic product direction, user research, or hands-on design work, we bring both the vision and execution to get your product back on track.
Looking for a UX design agency that understands both strategy and execution? Let's talk about how strategic design thinking can save your platform from LinkedIn's fate.
This article is based on content from the UX MURDER MYSTERY podcast.
HOSTED BY: Brian J. Crowley & Eve Eden
EDITED BY: Kelsey Smith
INTRO ANIMATION & LOGO DESIGN: Brian J. Crowley
MUSIC BY: Nicolas Lee
A JOINT PRODUCTION OF EVE | User Experience Design Agency and CrowleyUX | Where Systems Meet Stories ©2025 Brian J. Crowley and Eve Eden
Email us at: questions@UXmurdermystery.com
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