New Search Design

September 29th, 2009 Author: wmeurer

We’ve launched the new search tool! Read more about it on our main Mumboe blog.

For this project customer feedback was the driving force behind the change. Customers requested to see results for documents and contacts in addition to agreements. We looked over past customer searches, which indicated they were also looking for agreement templates and where to perform actions, like where to add a user.

Once we understood the requirements, we fleshed out a few questions that guided the development of the search tool, from design through implementation:

1. What would a searcher most likely search on? e.g. searching for Paul Jones, a contact, the searcher may search for ‘paul’ or part of his email address they remember
2. How can the searcher distinguish good results from unwanted ones? e.g. searching for a document, the searcher may be looking for the most recently uploaded
3. Once the correct item is located, how does the searcher get the information they want? e.g. looking for a contact, they may want to see the related agreements for that contact

Referring to these questions throughout the process directed decisions and kept us focused on the general goals of search: get the searcher to the information they want, quickly, and with little effort. The result is a search results page that provides both pertinent information about the search term and actions to take on that information. This is a big change from the report-style results page of yore.

We’re always looking to improve features, so feel please feel free give us feedback on the new search tool. We hope it helps get you the information you’re looking for.

Entry Filed under: User Interface