steve

Steve Ives, CEO and FounderApril 10, 2023

Creating the User Experience for a new mobile search engine

2mobile search made social.

Aims of presentation

“Walkthrough the UE design approach of a startup mobile

search company”

Introduce Taptu and the product

Walkthrough our UE design approach and tools

Demo of our latest product version

Question & answer session

3mobile search made social.

How many of you regularly use a search engine on your mobile?

4mobile search made social.

How many had a positive experience?

5mobile search made social.

About Taptu

FocusBuilding (and making money from) a new kind of mobile search

ExpertiseMobile user experience, search algorithms

Innovation15 key patent applications filed in mobile search

Service launchAlpha service in Oct 2007, Beta V1 in Feb 2008

Investors3i and Sofinnova, £5m Series A

6mobile search made social.

About me

Technologist and business guy

Serial entrepreneur: Aspective, Teamstudio, Trigenix, Taptu

50 years old

My children are Generation Y, I’m not….

7mobile search made social.

The challenge for Taptu

• Search requires a different approach in the mobile environment

• Search must be provided within a highly constrained interfaces - different devices, inputs, screen-size, latency

Google Mobile, Yahoo OneSearch and Live Search for Mobile are variations on a very similar theme.

They are designed and engineered from the perspective of:

“bringing the best of PC Web search to mobile phones”

8mobile search made social.

What is our UE Design process?

Our aim is to create usable, engaging and aesthetically pleasing products across the wide range of devices Taptu works on

We are pragmatic about UE approach - ‘Text-book’ approach not always possible - but we aim to use the right tools at the right stages

We spend a lot of our time thinking about the needs of our users and talking to users direct:

12 months, 14 user studies

133 users, 1 hour per user

9mobile search made social.

Key stages of our process…

Concepts + Ideas

10mobile search made social.

Key stages of our process…

Concepts + Ideas

Paper Prototyping

11mobile search made social.

Key stages of our process…

Concepts + Ideas

Paper Prototyping

Device Prototyping

12mobile search made social.

Key stages of our process…

Concepts + Ideas

Paper Prototyping

Device Prototyping

UE Testing

13mobile search made social.

Key stages of our process…

Concepts + Ideas

Paper Prototyping

Device Prototyping

UE Testing UI Spec

14mobile search made social.

Gary, 23 “Unwired Social” Kate, 27 “Digerati”

15mobile search made social.

16mobile search made social.

17mobile search made social.

18mobile search made social.

Prototyping the UE

Prototyping is central to our process - use it constantly as we develop new ideas & features

Key benefits to us:

1. Designing the end-to-end experience

2. Creating a believable product for a User Study

3. As a discussion tool with Engineering

We use two types at different stages - Paper Prototyping and Device Prototyping…

19mobile search made social.

User Task

20mobile search made social.

Task Flow Design

21mobile search made social.

Idea Annotation

22mobile search made social.

Device Prototyping …

23mobile search made social.

Device prototyping

Device Prototyping the is the next step from Paper Prototyping… need to experiment with designs on the target devices once we happy with design on paper

Hi-fidelity of device-based prototypes offer a number of benefits that paper prototypes don’t provide

The device-specific issues of screen size, input, controls, navigation, pixel-perfect visual design all need to be explored & considered

24mobile search made social.

How we do it?

Produce ‘static’ prototypes – they create a believable walkthrough of particular paths we want to test

HTML/CSS + Photoshop - create pixel perfect graphics and build prototypes using HTML

Slower to iterate than paper prototypes - but for many device/browser specific design issues/decisions we need to create device protos at various stages

Ideal for user testing - still minimal production and no engineering time required

25mobile search made social.

Device-specific design issues

What design issues do we deal with per device?

We have defined 3 core ‘families’ of device:

Low phone - standard 176x220 e.g. RAZR

Mid phone - QVGA e.g. Nokia N95, Sony Ericsson W880i

Hi phone - iPhone, more will follow

26mobile search made social.

Taptu on mid-phone (N95, W880i)

Branding and white space are key

Secondary navigation elements below the foldElements make it clearly a search engine

Global navigation elements grouped and consistent

27mobile search made social.

Taptu on hi-phone (iPhone)

Scrolling: Scrolling is much quicker with finger

Selection: Touch interface requires wider spacing of elements

Text entry: Text entry is quicker than other two device types

28mobile search made social.

Visual design + brand …

29mobile search made social.

UE Testing with users …

30mobile search made social.

UE testing approach

Once we have a working Device Prototype, we test…

On a monthly basis we find a set of target users and meet them face-to-face, one-to-one, 1 hour sessions

We test in London - so we can source widest demographics of users for sessions

We built a fully portable lab - so its less intrusive/formal and we can go anywhere with it

We make this a regular event in our schedule - so we get maximum exposure to testing concepts with real users

31mobile search made social.

Portable usability lab

32mobile search made social.

Mounted camera

33mobile search made social.

Picture-in-picture review format

34mobile search made social.

Live example of User Study Session…

35mobile search made social.

Future Taptu direction

Today: good at infotainment searches (e.g. music, movies, TV, news), mobile navigation (mobile sites)

Tomorrow: universal search

Search and share engine - enhancing sharing functionality with 1-Tap share concept

Human-assisted search for popular terms

Further user research + international research

36mobile search made social.

Conclusion

What have we learned aboutthe UE design process?

- Evaluate early- Don’t assume, do listen- Iterate often!

37mobile search made social.

You can try Taptu on your mobile phone browser - enter www.taptu.mobi

Or on PC - www.taptu.com

Or Facebook App - Search for ‘Music Wall’ in Facebook

Or Music Cube game - Search for “Music Cube” on Google

Q&A

Want to try it?