In search of better search box
Now a days who doesn't know Google. If you are searching for something its highly likely that you will go to Google's Site and first thing that greets you is a search box.
Looks simple enough isn't it ? How simpler can it get ? You just enter the text and click on search button and let the Google magic work.
Although it looks simple enough the search box does require serious thinking. Lets look at some other sites which you may come across.
Are you looking for a job ?
Naukri.com is a very popular job search site in India (probably outside India as well). So if you are looking for a job you can visit the site and try to search something that interests you. Here is what their search interface looks like:
Quite a bit of information to fill in to look for a job. This also reminds me a little of old applications when you have to know what attribute to search exactly and text search capabilities were not as developed as they are today. Thanks to progress in computing power and tools like Apache Solr building a search capability in your application is more fun now. Looking at this it may appear that searching for jobs is quite complex. It is but does the interface itself has to be this complex ?
Lets take a look at another job portal Shine.com. Its comparitively a younger entrant into this field.
That's better and looks much simpler than the previous one. Now Shine.com also provides an Advanced Search feature which will look very similar to the default interface on Naukri.com. Here it is:
So what is the key difference between the two? Both have taken a very different approaches to the UI of their search interface. On one hand naukri exposes all the different parameters while shine chose a different approach to only expose the parameters initially that they think are most crucial i.e. job and location. It does looks like that both can achieve same results as well. The naukri.com interface does looks a little cluttered initially.
Whats the news ?
India Environment Portal is a news aggergation site which has focus on environment related news and events. Here's how its search box looks like:
Once you search for something the subsequent screens it provides facets to filter the search results.
Open The Magazine is ... well a magazine on current affairs. Its search interface is very simple as well:
Similar to Indienvironmentportal, it also provides facets to further filter the results of the search. In the subsequent screens the search box also changes slightly.
In combination with facets the additional drop down is redundant and use of terms like "Body" is confusing as it is more of a technical term referencing content of articles.
Where are my friends?
FourSquare is a location based social networking site and its search interface looks like:
Its not only simple it tries to fill in the information related to your location as well.
Designing a better search interface
All these sites mentioned above make use of text search tools like Apache Solr with exception of Google, who have built a vast empire around their own serach technology. Understanding the technology can help us design better search interface. Some of the key parameters that can help you design a search interface can be:
- Knowing your target customer better. What will be the objectives for them to use search ? How tech savy will be the users ?
- In the initial search interface reduce the number of search boxes. If required do provide an option to use "Advanced Search" fields.
- Avoid using technical terms which may be confusing to your users.
As an example if you search for "Java programmer in Mumbai" in a single search box it can be made to give same results as search in two different search fields. The big difference is single search box looks more pleasing than multiple search boxes and is more user friendly.