[WikimediaMobile] Revamping search on Wikipedia mobile

[Tomasz Finc]

On Tue, Nov 1, 2011 at 4:34 PM, Brion Vibber <bvibber at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 1, 2011 at 1:51 PM, Tomasz Finc <tfinc at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>>
>> As we've continued with our beta (http://bit.ly/w4E2zn) its becoming
>> abundantly clear from feedback and our own research that we need to
>> get better about search. Search is the primary way that people start
>> their interaction with Wikipedia and we currently do it poor at best
>> on mobile.
>>
>> We've taken the first stabs at it
>>
>> * Change the search input box to stretch to full width (horizontal &
>> landscape)
>> * Lower the amount of search results and increase the font size of
>> what we do show
>> * Include spaces in between results to better segment each item
>> * Add a "+" to refine search term by term (our search data set will
>> need to get better to make this more awesome)
>
> I find the purpose and function of the "+" icon to be totally non-obvious on
> first glance, but Bing and Google both seem to feature similar ones on their
> mobile search suggestions so this may be becoming popular. Probably just
> needs some visual & interaction cleanup. :)

I think this is a styling issue. But think about it. If i want to find
an article about "Wikipedia for mobile" I type in one word and then
tap two buttons. Thats infinitely better then having to type out
everything.
The less someone has to use an on screen keyboard the better.

>
>
>> I took a look at a lot of mobile sites and one stuck out to me as
>> really interesting for search.
>>
>> bing.com (yes i know its microsoft .. lets pay attention to the design
>> rather then the ideology)
>>
>> Go to their site on a mobile (on a mobile) and start typing in text.
>> Notice how its now stolen your whole screen for search? Its loud but
>> thats the point. People are searching and moving forward. Not
>> interacting with the content thats on the screen.
>
> I am quite fond of this style; it's very appropriate for small-screen
> devices.
>
> Very similar to this interface is Firefox Mobile's version of desktop
> Firefox's 'awesomebar' -- when you click into the title/URL bar it
> immediately pops up a list of bookmarks/frequent sites from history which
> starts getting filtered/showing up relevant items as you start typing terms
> or a URL.
>
> Being able to also tap out of the on-screen keyboard and scroll this list
> can be very helpful as well!

Exactly and this way we can show more search results without having to
change the font size drastically.

--tomasz