Refining Your Search: Enhancing Search Efficiency for a More Productive Workflow
UX Designer I UX Researcher I Platform
Imagine spending nearly 50% of your workday searching for information. Professionals take an average of 18 minutes to locate a single document—time that could be spent making impactful decisions. The inefficiency of our platform’s search functionality frustrated my team, slowing productivity and causing unnecessary stress. This challenge inspired me to design a filter feature that streamlines the search process, helping users quickly and effortlessly find what they need.
My Role: UX Designer & UX Researcher
Team: UX Designer, UX Researcher, Developers, Product Manager, Stakeholders
Client: The Home Depot
Tools: Figma, FigJam, Jira, Miro, Zoom, Google Slides
Project Duration: 3 Weeks
Understanding the Roadblock
Our platform lacked an effective filtering system, making searches frustrating and overwhelming. Team members often spent hours—sometimes even days—navigating through an unstructured system.
My Game Plan
Before beginning the project, I actively gathered insights and feedback from my team to fully understand their needs and the motivations behind creating the filter feature. I discovered that team members often spent numerous hours—or even days—searching for information, making the process time-consuming and overwhelming. With a clear understanding of the problem, my approach was structured as follows:
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Develop Proto-Personas: Created proto-personas to empathize with users and ensure the filter feature addresses their pain points effectively.
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Facilitate a Collaborative Design Studio: Collaborated with business stakeholders, designers, researchers, and product managers to generate a wide range of design concepts and align on a shared vision for the feature.
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Conduct Usability Tests: Validated the effectiveness of the filter feature through usability testing, ensuring it resolved the core problem and improved the user experience.
This approach ensures that the filter feature is user-centered, grounded in real-world challenges, and collaboratively designed for maximum impact.
Develop Proto-Personas – Understanding user needs and pain points. Facilitate a Collaborative Design Studio – Aligning stakeholders on a shared vision. Conduct Usability Tests – Validating design decisions through real-world testing.
01
Proto-Persona
02
Design Studio
To kick off the development of the portal's filter feature, I led a discovery workshop with a cross-functional team, including a product manager, developer, stakeholders, and designers. Together, we brainstormed a wide range of ideas and aligned on a shared vision for the feature. After evaluating the sketches, we conducted a voting process to identify the most effective solution, setting a clear direction for implementation.
03
Wireframes
After presenting the wireframe to my team, I discovered that enhancing the user experience required allowing users to search for documents by individual columns rather than relying solely on sorting and a single search box. This approach would provide more precise and efficient navigation.
04
Explore the Interactive Prototype!
The final prototype serves as a refined solution to the challenges our users face, seamlessly addressing their needs and enhancing their overall experience.
05
Usability Test
Following the completion of the prototype, I conducted a usability test with 7 users to assess the effectiveness of this new feature in their daily tasks. Based on their feedback, I am now incorporating their suggestions and making necessary improvements and further enhance the functionality of the filter feature for our users. The usability testing revealed the following key takeaways:
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The users expressed a need for an 'Indicator of what is filtered'
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They requested the ability to apply multiple criteria to a single filter
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They expressed a desire for the option to download a filtered list of brands.
Looking Back
This project enhanced my leadership and communication skills while working in a cross-functional team. Designing the filter feature was a fascinating experience, especially with the various filter options available. I enjoyed the opportunity to:
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​Conduct design studio sessions and user interviews
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Present my findings to the team
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Lead workshops with business stakeholders, developers, designers, and product managers.
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Write a usability test script
If I were still working on the project, my next step would have been to continue supporting it as needed while the developers work on its implementation.