Presentation from UX Camp London 2009. A discussion of improving the search experience via result filtering and search interfaces.

1. The UX of Search
UX Camp London
August 22, 2009
Stuart Cruickshank
Senior UX Developer, BBC Worldwide
@gaijinstu
gaijinstu@gmail.com

2. Before we start...
I have a confession to make

3. Before we start...
I have a confession to make
Yes...I’m Australian

4. It’s all about laws
Fitts’ Law
Krug’s 3 laws of usability
Jakob Neilsen
Nielsen’s Law of Internet Bandwidth
Jakobs’s Law of Internet User Experience

5. My first law of search
Pagination sucks

7. It’s everywhere!
Google Bing
Amazon Ask

8. It’s everywhere!
Google Bing
Amazon Ask
Yahoo! Flickr
Yahoo! search pagination design pattern

9. Problems
Disjointed experience (Scroll, click...wait...scroll, click...wait...)
Remembering which page a certain result was on
Accessibility issues
Being able to click on a small arrow/number
Screenreader re-reading text at start of the page

10. My first stop on Google

11. Is it really a problem?
Organic Ranking Visibility
(shown in a percentage of
participants looking at a
listing in this location)
Rank 1 - 100%
Rank 2 - 100%
Rank 3 - 100%
Rank 4 - 85%
Rank 5 - 60%
Rank 6 - 50%
Rank 7 - 50%
Rank 8 - 30%
Rank 9 - 30%
Rank 10 - 20%

12. How can we improve this experience?

13. 1. Better results
Improved algorithms
Immediate filtering of results
Autosuggest
Faceted search
Kayak-type sliders
SXSW panel picker
Google Experimental : Preferred sites

14. 2. Better search interface
“Endless scrolling”

15. Visual browsing tools
CoolIris

16. Visual browsing tools
Searchme

17. Visual browsing
Apple

18. Can you imagine...
+ Endless scrolling
+ Highlighted preferred sites
+ CoolIris-style image searching

19. My second law of search
Folksonomies suck
(Sometimes)

20. Flickr

21. Flickr

22. Flickr
Search interface: yes! Search results: no!

23. Getty Images Catalyst

24. My third law of search
Folksonomies rock
(Sometimes)

25. Delicious
A user generated search engine?

26. The flaw in my theory...
Order by no. of
times bookmarked?!

27. Google to the rescue

28. Google to the rescue

29. Where do we go from here?
Algorithms e.g. Google
User generated suggestions e.g. Delicious
Improved interface experiences

30. Thoughts?
Examples?
Abuse about the cricket?

31. Thanks!