Design Update

Inside Design: Search in Category

  • 21 June 2019
  • 8 replies
  • 348 views
Inside Design: Search in Category
xiaoyu-shen
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To help users find the most relevant information, we are investigating advanced search capabilities. As a first step, we would like to introduce 'search in (parent) category'. Read on to learn more.



Goal

Allow users to search within a (parent) category so they are able to find more relevant information.



Solution

While searching from different pages, the search scope changes along. For example, searching in homepage will get search results and suggestions from all categories, and searching in category page will get results and suggestions just from that specific category. An ‘category indicator’ is shown above the search bar in search results page. By clicking on the close button of the indicator, you will get global search results again.







Feedback

If you have any feedback, suggestions, questions feel free to drop us a comment below.

8 replies

bjoern_schulze
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I like it!



One thing I could think of - but maybe you have this already on your mind for an expansion later: Right now it would only be possible to enlargen the search scope. But you couldn't limit it. So my suggestion would be: When the search scope isn't limited to a category, show a dropdown list of all categories (on the same position where the category indicator was before) to limit the search scope manually.
xiaoyu-shen
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Hi @bjoern_schulze, thanks for your suggestion!

Based on your feedback, we made a new design for search result page with capability to apply/switch category filter. What do you think? 🙂



bjoern_schulze
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Thank you for picking the feedback up!



I think the mobile version is intuitive and easy to understand for the user. Having the filter button right beside the search field is self-explanatory.



On desktop I feel like users won't make an intuitive connection between the content (search field and result list) and the sidebar (filter options). It looks like two separate things. Maybe wording can help, but maybe there is a UI option to make it easier to understand.



One other note: Have you checked the design, especially the filter list, and how it would behave in communities that have a lot of parent categories and categories? For example: Our community currently consists of 9 parent categories and (depending on the permissions upto) 42 categories. That could become a very, very long list (that's why I proposed a dropdown list).



Question: Will the filter list be multiple choice or "pick one"?
xiaoyu-shen
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Hi @bjoern_schulze ,

Thanks for your quick feedback! To answer your question: the filter list is a 'pick one' single selection.
lila_meyer
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Userlevel 7
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Glad to see this is under discussion and design. I’m starting to hear input from our customers that they’d like forum level filtering as well. We have a few parent categories for different products, and people want to be able to search for info that’s specific to that product without seeing results from other product categories.

Lila Meyer, Dir. Global Education Services
Hiewwaiy
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We agree with @lila_meyer, as i have already stated in this topic.

We also have different parent categories per product and our customers complain that they are not able to find the information they need. Most of our customers do not use all of our products, that is why they would like to search within a category that is relevant to them. I know it is a difficult question to answer, but do you have any idea when this will be picked up on your roadmap? 

Gr Hiewwaiy
xiaoyu-shen
Rank

Hey @Hiewwaiy and @lila_meyer, thanks for bringing the feedback in. I can see that it is crucial for end users to find the right information easily in big communities like yours. Regarding your question about planning Hiewwaiy, advanced search is one of our items on the backlog (hence this investigation). We’re unable to communicate and commit on any timelines at this point. Once we’ll start developing this functionality we will update you via the roadmap updates here on inSpired, at that point we can share a more concrete planning.

OVOdarran
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Search is a big one for us.  We are also looking at making sure this and the whole community is optimised for mobile as over half our users are visiting on mobile devices.   

 

@timcavey @NancyVics definitely worth a look. 

Community Manager // OVO Energy / Boost Power

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