The author will experience the search function from a variety of mature products and talk about some experiences.

The Internet has experienced the liberation from an information island to the right to speak on the Internet, and now it has solved the problem of targeted search and profit mechanism of massive information after refinement. Personalized and diversified content has become the status quo of the Internet.

Search function has become an interactive way for people to obtain information, and users' dependence on search engines has gradually increased, which belongs to the era of search.

In this paper, with examples, what factors should a search function that conforms to the user experience have? What are the trends of intelligent search function in the future?

Use an actual case to analyze the search function, hoping to help you.

First, the purpose of designing the search function

Convenience of obtaining information: With the popularity of smart phones and the improvement of network response speed, the way for users to obtain information from the Internet is more convenient.

Solve the inefficiency of search: The purpose of improving the search function is to improve the interactive efficiency of users to obtain information, facilitate users to find relevant content accurately and quickly from massive information, and solve the pain point of users' inefficient search.

Second, unreasonable search cases 1. case

I opened a takeaway APP to find out what delicious pasta is nearby, but I couldn't find the search function. Do I need to find spaghetti from a pile of rice hot pot?

I want to go to the movies. When searching the map, the search box was too small and I clicked it wrong several times. A good friend recommended a video APP, and there was no search hint in the search box. What kind of videos do I search for "inspirational" and "love"? Or search for "Nike" and "Blue Label" company brands?

Step 2: Questions

"Design Psychology" says:

"Anything that causes unnecessary trouble is called Norman. When a product is Norman, it actually admits that the producer of the product has not paid attention to the needs of the users, and this is exactly the message I want to convey. "

Although these daily problems sound trivial, they will affect your mood: either make you happy or make you depressed.

Third, what are the factors of reasonable search? The demand of 1. products is closely related to the target users.

Different products are suitable for different target users, and all the functions of this product design need to be defined according to the target population. Designing a product function without a target group is equivalent to building a car behind closed doors, which is extremely harmful to product design.

Liang Ning, a senior product manager, divided users into three typical characteristics when describing their classic portraits: Daming, Benben and Xiaoxian.

Daming users are very clear about their own needs. For example, men who buy shirts and 3C products are typical Daming users, who have the greatest search demand and high requirements for accuracy and efficiency. The characteristics of stupid users are-I have general needs, but I am not so clear. For example, when a girl buys a skirt, she has to look at it and choose it. The demand of stupid users is moderate and the search accuracy is not high; Xiaoxian users have no consumer demand, just to pass the time. For example: chatting, playing games or watching short videos. The demand for search is minimal, and the requirements for search accuracy and efficiency are minimal. 2. The location of the search box

Product Description: Open the home page of the product, and the search box will be uniformly placed above or in the upper right corner of the product.

Design reason: According to the analysis of the demand of the target population for search, when the product users have high demand for the accuracy and efficiency of search, the location of the search box should be placed above the product, and Gao Fancha contrast should be made with a dark background, emphasizing that the location of the search box is convenient for users to search.

When the search demand of product users is moderate, the contrast between the search box and the background color decreases, but the position of the search box remains at the top, which is convenient for users to find and search;

When the product user's search degree is low, the search function is weakened to an icon and placed in the upper right corner.

3. The UI details of the search box are easy for users to understand and interact.

Product Description: The height of the search box is usually between 50pt and 30pt, and "icon" is used instead of "search" text, and the search icon for voice or picture recognition is placed on the right side of the search box;

Design reason: According to Apple's "iPhone Man-Machine Interface Design Specification", the minimum click target size of a finger is 44 x 44 pixels. The interactive area of the search box or search icon should be larger than 44 x 44 pixels. Follow people's habit of reading from left to right, and put the search icon on the left to facilitate users to find it.

4. Add default text to the search box

Product description: The default text of Meituan is the takeaway restaurant that the user recently browsed or purchased; The default text in the search box of Gaode map is the main function provided by the search box; The default text of the instant search box is the hot words searched recently.

Design reason: the default text of the search function is to help the product answer the question of what to search for. If there is no prompt in the search box, users will be confused and helpless when using product search, which may greatly lead to the loss of a large number of users. The default text of external search should be designed to improve the relevance to the target users of the product, such as:

The pain point of Meituan takeaway is to help users order takeaway quickly and well. Every user has his own taste, so by analyzing the user's usage records and combining with big data statistics, the search default text is displayed as the hotel name that users often click, which can improve the ordering efficiency. Users will feel that the product knows their own tastes very well, thus improving the viscosity of users; The pain point solved by Gaode map is to help users navigate and reach their destinations. Then the default text of the search box is simple and directly prompts the user to search, which has the highest functional efficiency; It is an interest community immediately, and the target users are mostly fresh users (the purpose of using products is to kill time). The default text of the search box is recent hot words, which is helpful for users to search and improve the daily life of products. 5. Keep the history and product description of recommended search words when searching: click the search box to keep the history; At the same time, the page displays recommended search hot words;

Design reasons: after clicking the search box, the history is preserved to help users quickly check the same content when searching, saving the bad experience of repeated input; Adding recommended search content for users, when users are ready to search for keywords and inadvertently find interesting hot words in the recommended search content of commodities, it is easy to stimulate users to click and view, thus improving the click-through rate and purchase volume of commodity-related hot words or commodities.

Look for tips

Product description: users do not need to input complete content when searching, and the search function displays relevant search content in real time for users to choose according to their search words;

Design reason: In the Internet era where efficiency is king, saving time for users can greatly improve users' goodwill. This function tests the content related to product optimization search and improves the accuracy. The higher the accuracy, the higher the user's surprise.

7. Search fault tolerance rate

Product description: there are typos in the search content, and there are basically no wrong pages when searching, but the content that users may want to search is displayed to users through the product fault tolerance rate;

Design reason: The biggest function of search fault tolerance rate is to avoid transmitting negative states such as "wrong search" or "no search content" to users, causing negative emotions such as frustration, doubt and even anger when users use products, thus losing users.

Excellent search function will have fault tolerance rate and improve the accuracy of fault tolerance rate. The details that are more in line with the user experience are as follows: If the content of the user's search is a relatively remote new word, such as "appearance person", the product should prompt the user whether to continue searching for "appearance person" and give the user the right to choose, which can improve the user's goodwill.

Fourth, summarize the change of 1. Search function

If you search for things like "Thunder" or "Jackie Chan" in Baidu, the sound of thunder will come to life; Jackie Chan's personal profile, hobbies, favorite colors and recommendations from relevant people. For example, if you upload a picture to Baidu, it will automatically count the information or source of the picture.

2. Search for changes in interaction

User search is not limited to clicking on the search box, entering words and clicking on search. In the future, more trends have gradually developed to the intelligent level such as voice, image and even AR.

Even, the search behavior will gradually change from active to passive: the product calculates the types of clothes you may need to buy in the same season this year through the data of clothing purchase behavior last year, and actively asks if you need to search; Ask whether it is necessary to search the traffic conditions after work through travel records; There will soon be a platform-independent cross-device retrieval and data search method, just like different mobile phone applications can share contact information synchronously.

Step 3 look for future prospects

No matter how intelligent search develops in the future, search is still an interaction with people in the final analysis, and the interaction with people needs to consider the user experience. Search is only a small detail in the product, and there are more details waiting for us to learn and think.

This article was originally published by @ Blue Marbles. Everyone is a product manager. Reprinting is prohibited without the permission of the author.

The title map comes from Unsplash and is based on CC0 protocol.