1. The UX of Search
London IA in a Pub
October 14th, 2009
Stuart Cruickshank
gaijinstu@gmail.com
@gaijinstu

2. What I have learned about search...
Pagination sucks

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

5. Problems with pagination
Disjointed experience (Scroll, click...wait...scroll, click...wait...)
“Which page was that result on?!”
Accessibility issues
Clicking small arrows/numbers
Screenreader must re-read text at start of the page

6. My first stop on Google

7. Is it really a problem?
Organic Ranking Visibility
(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%
Source: prweb.com

8. How can we improve this experience?

9. 1. Better results
Improved algorithms
Immediate filtering of results
Autosuggest
Faceted search
Reductive search
Google Experimental : Preferred sites

10. 2. Better search interface
“Endless scrolling”

11. Visual browsing tools
CoolIris

12. Visual browsing tools
Viewzi

13. Visual browsing tools
Google Fast Flip

14. Visual browsing
Apple

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

16. What I have learned about search...
Folksonomies suck
(Sometimes)

17. Flickr

18. Flickr

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

20. Getty Images Catalyst

21. What’s the lesson?
Unguided folksonomies
are dangerous

22. What I have learned about search...
Folksonomies rock
(Sometimes)

23. Delicious - A guided folksonomy

24. Delicious
A user generated search engine?

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

26. Google to the rescue

27. What’s the lesson?
Guided folksonomies
are beautiful
(potentially)

28. How do we improve search experience?
Improved algorithms
User generated suggestions e.g. Delicious
Improved interfaces e.g. CoolIris

29. Thanks!