Loomio

Search for anything

RDB Richard D. Bartlett Public Seen by 64

As part of the 'Loomio 1.0' design process, we've been looking at how we can do a better job of search.

Currently there is the main Search field, which is used for finding discussions + decisions, and then there is the search field in the Groups menu for filtering your own groups.

Here's where we've got to so far for the next version.

Clicking the search icon opens the search dialog, including a list of all your groups:

Start typing in the search input and your groups list is filtered, and threads that match your search terms are returned:

I feel like this is an improvement, but I'm interested to hear what other people think. Does it make sense to you?

MI

mix irving Tue 4 Nov 2014 9:52PM

I'm not a fan of mixing those two things. I think groups might clutter discussions and I'll almost never want to search for a group, because phone keyboards are suck.

Also, i think it's important to mock up with a keyboard on screen, because that's what the user will experience - a very narrow slice of search. We might need to find a way to make search results thinner rows.

JK

James Kiesel Tue 4 Nov 2014 9:59PM

The 'clicking on a magnifying glass to view my groups' thing smells a bit to me; just looking at the interface, the first way I'd try to get to my groups would be the hamburger, then maybe the loomio icon, with 'search' being an unhealthy third.

Also, I'm not sure about sticking groups at the top of our search results every time, since we want to move towards threads being first-class citizens, and will pretty much ensure a healthy chunk of searches won't have the most relevant result on top.

I like the way trello handles this, with two different options for search. One is called 'boards' (aka groups), which filters by groups [it's not really a search since it shows you everything and then pares it down], and the other is called 'search', which returns a list of cards [aka discussions], followed by a list of groups.

In any case, I'd be wary of lumping the two use cases 'I want to go to my group' and 'where was that thread?' together; I think they're distinct and require separate attention.

ST

Simon Tegg Wed 5 Nov 2014 6:46AM

I like the search categorisation into groups and threads but unsure about the default display being groups. I think searching for threads are the larger use-case.

AI

Alanna Irving Sat 8 Nov 2014 6:03AM

I don't really like the idea of searching for groups using the main search. I must be one of the most active Loomio users out there... my Groups dropdown has over 50 groups. But I have never once desired to search them through the main search functionality. The feature we already have in there where you can type in the group name under the groups dropdown is awesome. No need to integrate it into the main search.

The main search bar should be to search for discussions. I'd love an "advanced search" in the future where you could also search within a certain group, search by author, search by date, and search comment text as well. But I'd prefer simply a better experience of searching discussion titles only as a first step.