Thursday, January 13, 2011

Oracle WebCenter Interaction: Improving the user search experience

Recently we enabled adaptive layouts in our 10.3 WCI environment with the goal of redesigning the search results layout.  Out of the box the results screen is overly cluttered and out of date with modern UI's.

What we removed and why:
  • Advanced search - unfriendly tool for users that are trying to find things quickly and easily
  • Save this search - another unfriendly tool where a user would have to know to add the "Saved search" portlet to their My Pages
  • Sort by - a world of options that no user takes advantage of
  • Created date - modified date is good enough
  • KD breadcrumb (on documents) - added clutter
What we added/modified and why:
  • Categories - as a nod to the advanced search features, Facebook/Google/Bing/Yahoo side navigation we chose to add categories for All, Documents, Folders, Collab Items and Web Content
  • Pagination - we chose to modify the UI of the pagination area to be more like Bing and other modern UI's which use mouse over boxes
  • Search result row - by taking the modified date out of the column, moving it below the description and coloring it green, a more recognizable design is achieved
The final look:

5 comments:

  1. GorgoMarch 14, 2011 at 5:21 PM

    Would you be able to provide a walk through on how you accomplished this?
    Any way to do this without using adaptive layouts?
    Thanks,
    V

    ReplyDelete
  2. Geoff GarciaMarch 30, 2011 at 4:26 PM

    Hey V, I'd be happy to walk you through this.
    Feel free to email me at ggarcia@marchofdimes.com and I can go through the details and send you my adaptive layout files.

    It involves changing one file - the search adaptive layout. You could probably do it without adaptive layouts, but that would be much more complicated, and honestly I'm not sure where that would even begin.

    ReplyDelete
  3. jlanfAugust 4, 2011 at 4:38 PM

    Hey Geoff,

    I really like what you've done with your search layouts! Would you be willing to post or email me your searchresultslayout.html? I am working on redesigning our UI and would really like to use your ideas.

    Thanks in advance,
    Jeff

    ReplyDelete
  4. Geoff GarciaAugust 9, 2011 at 3:56 PM

    Sure thing Jeff, just send me an email me at ggarcia@marchofdimes.com so I can get your email address. It doesn't show up under your account on here for me.
    Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  5. mahakk01November 9, 2011 at 3:06 AM

    I really like your idea of improving user experience and you executed this idea very well. I really like the layout design. I am regular follower of your blog and I like your article. If possible the share development idea with us.I am impressed wit your design so I want to try it.
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    ReplyDelete

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