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)
Thats already way better then what we've had in the past but we still need to do more.
We need to make some choices about where we take search next. One current problem is that were not really using our screen real estate as effectively as we could on mobile. Whenever I see users using search their consistently moving forward. Their not interacting with the content thats on the article that their on and instead they want something new. If thats the basic case then why should we be wastin screen real estate on a tiny device that no on is really using. This is a basic fact of mobile that you need to focus the user on what's happening not distracting the with noise.
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.
Other good examples
http://www.google.com/m (clean) http://m.yelp.com/ (really good use of images)
There are other design hurdles to tackle but I think we can do a lot of good by just tweaking search before we do a big UI redesign.
Lets discuss!
--tomasz
On Tue, Nov 1, 2011 at 1:51 PM, Tomasz Finc tfinc@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 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!
-- brion
On Tue, Nov 1, 2011 at 4:34 PM, Brion Vibber bvibber@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Tue, Nov 1, 2011 at 1:51 PM, Tomasz Finc tfinc@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
The full-screen approach is a good idea. In terms of a scrolling list, one has to wonder what the limit will be in terms of items suggested. Perhaps the last item could be a "more" link?
Suggestions based on history is a good idea. There is a feature request as follows:
Auto-complete based on history too bugzilla:31598https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=31598 Low
under "Remaining in Bugzilla" on Mobile Projects/features:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Projects/features
It would be good to hear from users how desirable this would be.
Phil
On Tue, Nov 1, 2011 at 4:34 PM, Brion Vibber bvibber@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Tue, Nov 1, 2011 at 1:51 PM, Tomasz Finc tfinc@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 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!
-- brion
Mobile-l mailing list Mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l
On Wed, Nov 2, 2011 at 10:11 AM, Philip Chang pchang@wikimedia.org wrote:
The full-screen approach is a good idea. In terms of a scrolling list, one has to wonder what the limit will be in terms of items suggested. Perhaps the last item could be a "more" link? Suggestions based on history is a good idea. There is a feature request as follows: Auto-complete based on history too bugzilla:31598 Low under "Remaining in Bugzilla" on Mobile Projects/features: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Projects/features It would be good to hear from users how desirable this would be.
So I can see this working in two ways. We make use of HTML5 web storage to record what people search (obvious privacy discussion) and save it on their phone or we record it per account (even more of a privacy discussion)
Thoughts?
--tomasz
Why not "trending topics" - pages that have been seeing lots of traffic in recent time?
I'm not sure how easily that would be to code up, though.
On 11/2/11 10:20 AM, Tomasz Finc wrote:
On Wed, Nov 2, 2011 at 10:11 AM, Philip Changpchang@wikimedia.org wrote:
The full-screen approach is a good idea. In terms of a scrolling list, one has to wonder what the limit will be in terms of items suggested. Perhaps the last item could be a "more" link? Suggestions based on history is a good idea. There is a feature request as follows: Auto-complete based on history too bugzilla:31598 Low under "Remaining in Bugzilla" on Mobile Projects/features: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Projects/features It would be good to hear from users how desirable this would be.
So I can see this working in two ways. We make use of HTML5 web storage to record what people search (obvious privacy discussion) and save it on their phone or we record it per account (even more of a privacy discussion)
Thoughts?
--tomasz
Mobile-l mailing list Mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l
On Wed, Nov 2, 2011 at 10:46 AM, Brandon Harris bharris@wikimedia.org wrote:
Why not "trending topics" - pages that have been seeing lots of traffic in recent time?
I'm not sure how easily that would be to code up, though.
That might actually be more interesting then individual search suggestions as our cache hit rate shows us that our users are very similar.
--tomasz
hooray for mobile search improvements! yeah, we're talking about two separate things, both of which could be valuable additions to our mobile site from what we've seen:
* personal/device search history. it would be great to incorporate and give priority to previously searched terms or visited pages. but i'd go one step further and consider an explicit search history/page view history/articles recently visited/ recent searches, especially for smartphones and apps. in more active wikipedia readers, we noticed existing habits doing this - sometimes it was a workaround using a browser or devices bookmarking capabilities and other times it was a feature offered in an app. in both cases, we observed that navigating to these pages through these histories or bookmarks was *much* preferred to retyping. to reiterate what others have already said: typing is costly. on touchsreen devices, taps and scrolls are much cheaper. on non touch screen devices, arrow or scroll downs are sometimes much cheaper (blackberries) and sometimes only minorly cheaper.
* aggregate search history/trending topics. i think this would be most appropriate in a smartphone/app scenario. generally speaking folks want to search, find the article, get an understanding of a topic/find the piece of information or answer they were looking for and move on from there. discovery, browsing, and less directed interactions wikipedia do happen, just far less frequently. which isn't to say that we can't enable it or encourage it - but such offerings should not be included at the cost of fast and easy access to search and navigation to a particular page.
but back to easier search. full screen focus for search is the way to go - for all devices with larger screens!! and minimizing typing for all devices (and all languages!!) as well, and i'm confident we can massage the interaction to accomplish this along with autocomplete and search suggestions. the transportability of this across languages, i am completely uncertain of.....
one thing to add to the mix to consider: people frequently mention needing just an overview or quick understanding of a top in their mobile scenarios. we've discussed first paragraph preview or even a "mobile summary". i can see it implemented here as an option to load (or otherwise view or preview) the first paragraph or go to the full article. thoughts?
ok, one more thing to add to the mix: what of peoples google practices of [searchterm] [wiki] or even just [searchterm], relying on the wikipedia page being on of the top results. we'll have numbers in quantity from our survey, but from our qualitative research, ~1/3 of folks reached the wikipedia mobile site this way, not to mention carrying over from computer practices. wapedia users are prompted when they click on a google search result in the wikipedia namespace to either open the link in a browser or open it in the app....something to consider when we're pondering search.
parul
On Wed, Nov 2, 2011 at 10:51 AM, Tomasz Finc tfinc@wikimedia.org wrote:
On Wed, Nov 2, 2011 at 10:46 AM, Brandon Harris bharris@wikimedia.org wrote:
Why not "trending topics" - pages that have been seeing lots oftraffic
in recent time?
I'm not sure how easily that would be to code up, though.That might actually be more interesting then individual search suggestions as our cache hit rate shows us that our users are very similar.
--tomasz
Mobile-l mailing list Mobile-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l