Open letter to LinkedIn from my middle-aged eyes
/Dear LinkedIn,
We’ve known each other a while now—it was 10 years back when I signed up and only 3 years later when I really got excited about our partnership. You encouraged me to create an all-star profile, every time you saw me. You encouraged me to connect with colleagues and friends. You quietly suggested—just by your very existence—that I think about my career and create a profile that wouldn’t bore anyone to death. Because of your relentless encouragement, I did all that.
Thank you.
And now I’d like to do something for you to repay the favour in some tiny way. You know when you’re out for lunch with a friend and at the end, some of that lunch is stuck between your friend’s teeth? Even though it’s awkward, you tell your friend—because you care about your friend and don’t want her to be embarrassed later on.
Please take my unsolicited feedback in that same spirit…
Here goes…
A while back, you did some design upgrades and the next thing I knew, I was squinting a little each time I read a LinkedIn profile, mine included. You fell for a sleek design trend: using light grey font on a white background. But then you added your own twist by giving your font the disease of tiny-itis.
And you know what you’ve done to your excellent platform? You’ve made it hard to read.
Here’s why you should care about this: 61% of your users are between 30- and 64-years old, according to this LinkedIn round-up by Hootsuite.
The bottom part of that demographic—they don’t care about tiny grey font on a white background. But they will.
Because in about ten years, they’ll have the same experience as the rest of us in that demographic: at their next eye exam, everything will be alright until the optometrist asks, “Have you noticed any changes in your vision?”
Then the confession: “Well…I seem to need more light when I read…”
And the optometrist breezily waves it off with, “That’s normal for middle-aged eyes and you’ll probably need reading glasses later.”
But your 40- to 64-year-old users simply heard this accusation: “You’re middle-aged.”
And while that’s technically true, a lot of us feel young at heart. Alive. Optimistic about the future and our contributions to it.
Except that’s hard to hold on to when we’re squinting at LinkedIn, even on a 23-inch monitor. Each update and profile we strain to see is deepening the wrinkles around our peepers.
LinkedIn, you can help us.
Just use black font. Please.
The tiny-itis doesn’t even matter once the contrast is increased.
Please don’t feel too bad about creating this low-contrast situation that makes it harder to enjoy your helpful platform. Even the American Optometric Association fell for this design trend.
That doesn’t make it right.
But you can make it right.
LinkedIn, give us some reader-friendly black-on-white text.
Thank you.
Respectfully yours,
Andrea Bassett’s young-at-heart but technically middle-aged eyes.
I'm Andrea Bassett, an executive ghostwriter and content marketing writer in Toronto and I’ve spent the last decade serving executives.
I write thought leadership content marketing for executives and/or their content marketing teams. My specializations are corporate wellness, benefits, employee assistance programs, leadership & coaching, encryption & cybersecurity and strength training for seniors.
To talk about a content marketing project, call me at 647-502-3187 or send a note to andrea@redsailwriters.com.
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