[WikimediaMobile] Revamping search on Wikipedia mobile

[Philip Chang]

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<https://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 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 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 at lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l
>
>


-- 
Phil Inje Chang
Product Manager, Mobile
Wikimedia Foundation
415-812-0854 m
415-882-7982 x 6810
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/mobile-l/attachments/20111102/400bffbf/attachment.htm