Redesigning the Search experience
Overview
As the Senior Product Designer working alongside the product manager and engineers as part of a product triad, I led the end-to-end UX process for the initiative to redesign a core element of the platform – the search experience.
In this case study
Cross-functional collaboration, continuous product discovery, double diamond, problem definition, ideation, workshops, validating UX concepts via usability testing.
My role
Senior Product Designer
Year
August 2022 - February 2023
Client
The Product
Intelligence is an AI-powered platform that supports procurement and supply chain experts in their supplier selection process. It simplifies finding, comparing, evaluating suppliers, by consolidating all supplier information (i.e. financial, economic, certifications, diversity, sustainability) in one place. It helps get an advantage in negotiations and ultimately make better strategic decisions.
The Problem
Usability tests showed that users were struggling with search. Core component of the user experience, search helps users find suppliers based on location, certifications, ESG data, and product offerings. It turned out users were having trouble selecting appropriate search terms, filters, and interpreting results. This confusion made it difficult to find relevant suppliers.
The Goal
The objective was to redesign and improve the search experience by making it more intuitive and simple.
The Challenge
The main challenges were:
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customers came from very different industries (e.g., automotive vs. FMCG) which meant that their needs varied significantly,
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each customer had different criteria for what defines a “good” supplier,
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nomenclature different from customer to customer.
My Approach
1. Problem definition with product manager.
2. Deep dive into previous user research, usability sessions and competitors.
3. Synthesized all insights and defined How might we questions.
4. Conducted cross-functional ideation workshops with key stakeholders, including the product manager, designers, developers, engineers, and data teams.
5. Ideas prioritization.
6. Created a UX concept and ran usability testing sessions to validate it.
7. Synthesized the learnings, prioritised recommendations, helping the product manager include them on the roadmap.
8. After implementation, we ran additional testing to make sure the improved experience met user expectations.
Step 1: Problem definition
Before jumping into prototyping or design:
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I synced with the Product Manager about what problem we're trying to solve,
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I synced with the engineering team to understand the technology powering search and its limitations.
Step 2: Research
To define the problem space I consolidated insights from:
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previous usability testing sessions,
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user research (interviews, personas, user journeys),
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notes from previous brainstorming and ideation sessions,
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heuristic evaluations of the product,
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competitor analysis and benchmarking.
Step 3: Synthesis
I grouped all insights into themes based on user journey steps. Next, I synthesized insights into design opportunities using How might we framing.
Step 4: Cross-functional ideation workshop
I facilitated the ideation workshop with the whole team: product manager, other designers, developers, engineering, data and customer success teams. The goal of the workshop was to kick off the discussion, foster a common understanding of the problem space, focus on the right problems, and ideate potential solutions. During the workshop I introduced each problem, gave time for reflection, and facilitated the ideation process.
Step 5: Solution idea prioritization
After the workshop, together with the Product Manager and the engineers, I prioritized the solution ideas by placing them in three categories: solutions we're highly confident in, assumptions we’d test again, and deprioritized solutions.
Step 6: UX Concept & Usability Testing
I designed the UX prototype which included:
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advanced search with a spell checker and phonetic tools,
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smart suggestions in the dropdown menu,
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showing the category (e.g. Products, Companies) in the auto-suggestion menu,
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new green tags on the results page to signify the supplier is a match,
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improved visibility and usability of filtering.
I ran 7 usability testing sessions, which consisted of 2 parts:
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testing the existing solution on the live product,
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testing the future vision with a clickable Figma prototype.
Before running usability testing I defined:
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a clear testing goal or testing question (e.g. is the navigation clear?)
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respective task or question I'll ask the user (e.g. "How would you go about finding...?")
Step 7: Insights synthesis & prioritization
When it comes to running moderated usability testing sessions, I use a special approach to note taking:
1. During the session, I take notes on post-its that I color-code based on sentiment, i.e.:
🔴 red for negative feedback or a failed task,
🟢 green for positive feedback or when the task was easy,
🟠 amber for neutral feedback or task completion with some setbacks.
Color-coding creates visual representation of user sentiment.
2. After the sessions, I tag each post-it with the participant’s identifier (e.g., User 1, User 2) to maintain traceability.
3. I organize the feedback into themes/affinity groups first. Next, I sort post-its by sentiment within each theme/group. This helps scan sentiment inside themes much faster and identify the most problematic areas.
4. Lastly, I defined recommendations to address the problems.
This structured approach ensured that decisions were informed by comprehensive insights, ultimately guiding the decision making toward more user-centered outcomes.
Insights from the usability testing were:
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Users were able to find filters more easily than before.
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Users appreciated the green tags on matching supplier cards on the results page. This helped them quickly identify top suppliers.
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They loved the sorting of the list with perfect matches on top. They also liked seeing less perfect "fuzzy" matches on the bottom, which are useful for diversity and certificate related searches.
Key takeaways
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By running frequent workshops with the cross-functional team and other stakeholders, I was able to foster a common understanding of the problem space and ensured that we focused on the right problems.
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Conducting several rounds of usability testing with customers helped validate our solutions continuously.
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As a result, the redesigned search experience enhanced user satisfaction by 17%.
