Refining Your Search: A simpler way to find what you need
UX Designer I UX Researcher I Platform
The Challenge:
Internal teams were losing up to 50% of their day searching for documents. Each search took an average of 18 minutes per file, slowing workflows and creating frustration across the business. The platform’s outdated search lacked advanced filters, forcing users to rely on broad keyword searches and endless scrolling.
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The Goal:
Designed a column-based filtering system that empowers users to quickly locate documents, eliminate unnecessary steps, and streamline workflows. This new feature allows precise control by enabling filtering through individual attributes, combining multiple filters, and displaying active filters instantly, saving users from sifting through irrelevant results.
​Impact:
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Reduced document search time from 18 minutes to seconds
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Increased search accuracy and reduced user frustration
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Laid the groundwork for scalable filtering across other tools
Company: The Home Depot | Timeline: 3 Weeks
My Role: UX Designer & UX Researcher – led research, design studio workshop, prototyping, and usability testing
Team: Product Manager, Developers, UX Designer, UX Researcher, Stakeholders
Tools: Figma & FigJam, Miro, Jira & Confluence
Meet Tim Jordan
Occupation: Campaign Management | Age: 35 | Location: Atlanta, GA
About:
Tim is a campaign creator for different brands at The Home Depot. One of his daily tasks is to gather information from the brands that have active campaigns with The Home Depot. He has to go through 500+ files searching for the information he needs. He wishes there were a way he could easily search and sort the files.
Challenges:
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Spend a lot of time searching through documents to find what they need.
Wasted time opening multiple documents to find the needed information.
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Lack of filtering options forces manual and repetitive searching.
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Difficulty in managing complex projects due to disorganized document access.
"It would be great if I could search for the information I need instead of going through all the pages."
Goals:
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Locate specific documents and assets quickly to keep projects on track.
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Reduce time spent sifting through irrelevant search results.
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Gain control over search parameters to refine results precisely.
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Streamline workflows to improve productivity and reduce frustration
Evolution of the Design
Ideas in Motion: Inside the Design Studio
To kick off the ideation phase, I facilitated a design studio workshop with product managers, developers, designers, and stakeholders. Together, we brainstormed various filtering mechanisms, sketched initial concepts, and voted on the most promising ideas. This collaborative process helped us build consensus and establish a clear direction for moving forward.
Blueprinting the Experience
The journey to refining the filter experience started with a straightforward concept: a single search box combined with sorting. This approach was functional but had limitations; users needed more control over their searches to quickly find the exact information they needed.
Iteration 1: The Single Search Box & Sorting
I started with a clean, intuitive design that enabled users to search globally across all data and sort the results easily. While this approach provided basic functionality, it quickly became clear that it lacked precision. Users often had to scroll through numerous irrelevant results, which slowed down their workflows and caused frustration.
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The Key Insight: Small Change, Big Difference
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After sharing the initial wireframes, a valuable opportunity emerged: instead of relying solely on a single global search box, users should be able to apply filters on individual columns. This subtle but powerful shift dramatically enhanced search accuracy and overall usability, empowering users to find exactly what they needed faster and more efficiently.
Final Design: Precision at Every Step
The final wireframes introduced column-specific search functionality, enabling users to:
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Search within individual columns instead of scanning the entire dataset
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Combine multiple filters simultaneously for more precise results
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Significantly reduce search time, creating a smoother and frustration-free experience
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Outcome: A Smarter, More Efficient Search
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This seemingly small adjustment transformed the filtering experience into one that’s intuitive, accurate, and truly reflective of user needs—showcasing the power of iterative design and user-centered thinking in action.
Explore the Interactive Prototype!
With wireframes approved, I built a clickable, interactive prototype to bring the feature’s flow and functionality to life. This prototype became a crucial tool for gathering feedback, serving as a dynamic focal point for developers, stakeholders, and users to explore, test, and refine the experience together.
The Usability Report Card
To validate the design, I conducted usability testing with seven users. Their feedback drove key enhancements:
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Filter Indicator: Users needed a clear, at-a-glance view of active filters.
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Multi-Criteria Filtering: Being able to filter by multiple attributes simultaneously was essential.
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Export Functionality: Users wanted to download filtered results for offline use.
These refinements ensured the final feature was not only powerful but also intuitive and user-friendly, directly addressing user needs and improving overall experience.
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In the Brand Management platform, I designed an intuitive filtering system to help users
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Efficiently locate specific brands within large datasets.
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The column filter dropdown allows users to open a detailed filter panel, where they can select or deselect individual brand entries and apply precise search criteria.
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Each brand row includes an action menu with options for managing that brand’s details, streamlining workflows, and boosting usability.
Looking Back: Lessons & Growth
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This project significantly strengthened my skills in leading collaborative design studios and cross-functional workshops, conducting research and synthesizing insights, building and testing interactive prototypes, and confidently presenting UX decisions to diverse teams. It reinforced the importance of involving stakeholders early and continuously to align goals and foster shared ownership of the design direction.
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If I were to continue on this project, my next focus would be on supporting developers closely during the implementation phase to ensure design fidelity, while also gathering post-launch feedback to inform future iterations and further refine the user experience. This ongoing cycle of testing and learning is key to delivering solutions that truly meet user needs and drive business impact.