In 2022, LinkedIn faced an influx of fake accounts on its platform. After a news article criticized LinkedIn's lack of action on this issue, our leadership requested a swift solution. At LinkedIn, such focused on fast-paced initiatives are termed as "War rooms". We formed a tiger team comprising multiple surface PMs, engineering, legal, data science leads, and myself.

As a lead designer, my role involved collaborating with stakeholders, brainstorming and implementing rapid iterations, and delivering the solution. The solution achieved a ~12% reduction in accepted fake account invites. This project also became a catalyst for LinkedIn's Verifications product strategy, where I helped shape early design concepts and provided design direction to my team after transitioning to a full-time manager.

Like most social platforms, LinkedIn faces challenges with fake accounts. While LinkedIn actively improves its AI detection models to identify and remove suspicious accounts behind the scenes, we still need human-centered design solutions for scenarios where machines fall short.

In our distributed organizational structure, success required breaking down barriers between teams and product pillars to keep everyone involved, informed, and invested throughout the process. While we welcomed ideas from everyone, we established a RAPID framework to ensure effective design decisions.

As the P(perform) and D(decision maker) in this RAPID, my product partner and I led a tiger team of designers and product managers from Growth, Network, and Profile teams who would agree (A) to the solution my product partner and I proposed. After assembling key stakeholders, defining a clear brief and conducting several brainstorming sessions, we established our design principles and initial hypotheses.

Our hypothesis:

We found that 20% of fake account invitations come from bots or scammers, with no mutual connections—this was a key signal. Based on this insight, I designed contextual interventions for invitations from suspicious accounts. This initiative lead to a ~12% reduction in fake account invites that were accepted.

You might ask, "Why add more friction?" In this case, we deliberately added friction as a protective barrier between sender and recipient. This reinforced our commitment to keeping members safe while networking on the platform. We knew a passive bottom sheet (without a clear call-to-action) wouldn't achieve our objectives, so—despite some stakeholder pushback—we made "View Profile" the primary action button. We also added a subtle banner for messages from non-connections without mutual contacts to give users more context.

To enhance authenticity for credible profiles, we focused on elevating legitimate accounts.

I explored adding profile signals on profile pages that would help members distinguish between real and fake accounts. This led to the development of an "About this profile" bottom sheet—a feature available on every profile that displays objective facts to help identify potential fake accounts. In collaboration with the profile team, we launched a component that shows both the profile creation date and last update information, which are considered to be among crucial indicators of profile authenticity.

This initiative lead to a ~12% reduction in fake account invites that were accepted.

Project and stakeholder management - This project was a masterclass in coordinating a complex initiative across multiple teams and leadership levels, and executing under high leadership visibility and pressure conditions.

Leadership & Communication - Working closely with senior directors on this initiative taught me many communication strategies to effectively communicate with stakeholders, from Directors to VPs.

Opportunity for impact - Despite the pressure, this challenge became an opportunity for me to demonstrate my ability to make informed decisions, communicate effectively, and deliver design solutions with agility. I'm particularly proud that this feature not only improved key trust metrics but also catalyzed other projects focused on account authenticity and credibility on LinkedIn.