Thinking of porting your Web finding experience to iPhone, Android, or Windows Mobile? Just forget about the fact that these devices are basically full-featured computers with tiny screens. Having gone through this design exercise a few times, I have realized that designing a great mobile finding experience requires a way of thinking that is [...]
Posts under ‘Articles’
Numeric Filters: Issues and Best Practices
Originally published on UXMatters.com February 8, 2010 ⇒
Faceted search has been around for a long time and has become the de facto standard for search on most ecommerce sites. However, filters with numeric values remain among the most confusing, because many sites have not able to design usable numeric filters that people can use in [...]
More Like This: A Design Pattern
Originally Published on UXMatters.com January 4, 2010 ⇒
In my last installment of Search Matters, “Cameras, Music, and Mattresses: Designing Query Disambiguation Solutions for the Real World,” I presented several design strategies for query disambiguation.
Unfortunately, most sites do not make sufficient use of this pattern and some that do use it design and implement it incorrectly.
Show [...]
Make More Money: Best Practices for Ads in Search Results: Part 2
Co-written with Frank Guo ⇒
Originally published on UXMatters.com November 2, 2009 ⇒
In this installment of Search Matters, we’ll continue our discussion of ads in search results. If you missed it, read Part 1, which covered these best practices:
Integrate your ads’ appearance with the rest of your site.
Make sure customers can easily distinguish ads from [...]
Make More Money: Best Practices for Ads in Search Results: Part 1
Co-written with Frank Guo ⇒
Originally published on UXMatters.com October 5, 2009 ⇒
Conflicting demands make many UX professionals think of ads as a necessary evil. Customers frequently go out of their way to say they hate ads, while marketers always seem to try their hardest to stuff as many of them as they can on each [...]
Best Practices for Designing Faceted Search Filters
Originally published on UXMatters.com on September 7, 2009 ⇒
Recently, Office Depot redesigned their search user interface, adding attribute-based filtering and creating a more dynamic, interactive user experience. Unfortunately, Office Depot’s interaction design misses some key points, making their new search user interface less usable and, therefore, less effective. That’s the bad news. The good news [...]
Brave New World of Visual Browsing
Co-written with Ahmed Riaz ⇒
Originally published on UXMatters.com August 3, 2009 ⇒
When the Web began, pages were mostly text, but today, everywhere we look, it seems like image content is taking over the Web. The ubiquitous use of digital cameras and improvements in the picture quality of mobile phone cameras has likely helped this phenomenon [...]
The Mystery of Filtering by Sorting
Originally published on UXMatters.com July 6, 2009 ⇒
What is the difference between filtering and sorting for a search query? Any SQL developer would be happy to tell you that a sort translates to a SQL ORDER BY statement, while a SQL WHERE clause performs a filter. However, for most users of consumer-facing ecommerce applications, the [...]
Search Results Satori: Balancing Pogosticking and Page Relevance
Originally published on UXMatters.com June 8, 2009 ⇒
When designing the data and layout for search results pages, the design strategy boils down to a single key principle: show the greatest number of results possible, without increasing pogosticking. In other words, the challenge is finding the right balance between
providing enough information in individual search results, so [...]
Making $10,000 a Pixel: Optimizing Thumbnail Images in Search Results
Originally published on UXMatters.com May 11, 2009 ⇒
In search results, the old adage a picture is worth a thousand words rings true. When it comes to making your search results more efficient to use, more relevant, and more attractive, images reign supreme. There is simply nothing else on your search results pages that can come [...]
Searching Help: Don’t Even Go There
Co-written with Tricia Clement ⇒
Originally published on UXMatters.com Published: April 13, 2009 ⇒
Web site user assistance that consistently exceeds customer’s expectations can catapult your company to legendary status and create brand equity you can measure in billions of dollars. However, making Help a strategic asset for your company is an arduous task. To shed light [...]
Choosing the Right Search Results Page Layout: Make the Most of Your Width
Originally published on UXMatters.com March 9, 2009 »
Page layout forms the foundation in presenting search results. Your layout decisions for search results pages will have tremendous impact on the user experience for your entire site. Choosing the right width for search results is important, and the optimal width for search results may be a great [...]
Starting from Zero: Winning Strategies for No Search Results Pages
he typical product team has no coherent strategy for cases when there are no search results. Most teams spend the bulk of their design phase working on the search results pages for a successful search. Then, at the last minute, the engineers hurriedly slap something together for the no search results page and launch. Such an approach is detrimental to the success of a search experience. Search, more than any other activity on your Web site, is a living, evolving process of discovery, a conversation between a customer and your system. Unfortunately, misunderstandings in this conversation are all too common, and the effectiveness of the page that appears when there are no search results is critical to keeping the customer engaged.
Experience Partners: Giving Center Stage to Customer Delight
Today, the design industry is at the threshold of a new epoch—a point of theoretically limitlessness potential for expansion. We must decide just how, going forward, we will relate to the people who use our designs—as people who are “busy and eager to get on with it” yet “alert and caring” or, much less constructively, as people who are merely “simple-minded and stupid.” Therefore, I want to propose the concept of experience partners as a whole new way of thinking about our customers as partners in holistic product experiences. We need new terminology to describe this concept, because the term users limits us to old ways of thinking about the world we live in and the products we develop. The term experience partners reflects an emerging paradigm shift from a focus on product features to instead conceptualizing holistic product experiences and embodies our best understanding of how to design products that create delight and become integral, harmonious parts of people’s lives.
Improve the Usability of Search-Results Pages: Add Sophisticated but Easy-to-Use Filtering and Sorting Controls
Originally Published in JavaWorld.com, January 23, 2006 ⇒
E.R. Tufte, in his phenomenal book Envisioning Information, states, “Clarity and simplicity are completely opposite of simple-mindedness.” This false simple-mindedness is often evident in the design of a search-results page. Even on some of the leading e-commerce sites, this important page is frequently made hard to use by [...]
Plotting PIA
Cohesive “real-world” guidance to creating, mapping, and deploying .NET Primary Interop Assemblies (PIAs). Practical advice on creating PIAs, three alternative methods for .NET solution mapping, and robust ClearCase integration using absolute file path. Published in ASP.NET Pro November 2005 »
Timestamp-Based Caching Framework: Current Data with Peak Performance
Originally Published on JavaWorld.com, January 3, 2005 ⇒
Build a dynamic LRU cache framework using standard Java utility classes
In his timeless masterpiece, The Art of War, Sun Tzu states: “…one who is skilled in warfare principles …takes the enemy’s walled city without attacking… His aim must be to take All-Under-Heaven intact. Therefore, weapons will not be [...]
Web-Based Distributed Systems with XML: Loan Exchange B2B Company Case Study
The idea of building effective Web-based distributed systems has been around for a long time. However, much of the efforts have been unsuccessful, largely due to the loose and fuzzy nature of the web architecture, and because HTML and proprietary formats, the two most common web communication mechanisms, do not lend themselves well to sharing [...]
Beginings of Social Networking: Business Process Redesign With Vertical Net Communities
Vertical Net Communities (VNCs) are changing the way customers interact with data through a slew of services made possible by technologies such as electronic data exchange, secure credit card processing and sophisticated communication tools. VNCs are reshaping entire industries by providing a new level of customization of content and commerce and by engaging the users in producing information. MS CIS Program Paper, Golden Gate University, November 2000.