Steve Ives, CEO and FounderApril 10, 2023

Creating the User Experience for a new mobile search engine

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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

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

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How many had a positive experience?

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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

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About me

Technologist and business guy

Serial entrepreneur: Aspective, Teamstudio, Trigenix, Taptu

50 years old

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

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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”

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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

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Key stages of our process…

Concepts + Ideas

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Key stages of our process…

Concepts + Ideas

Paper Prototyping

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Key stages of our process…

Concepts + Ideas

Paper Prototyping

Device Prototyping

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Key stages of our process…

Concepts + Ideas

Paper Prototyping

Device Prototyping

UE Testing

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Key stages of our process…

Concepts + Ideas

Paper Prototyping

Device Prototyping

UE Testing UI Spec

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

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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…

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User Task

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Task Flow Design

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Idea Annotation

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Device Prototyping …

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Visual design + brand …

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UE Testing with users …

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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

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Portable usability lab

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Mounted camera

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Picture-in-picture review format

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Live example of User Study Session…

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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

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Conclusion

What have we learned aboutthe UE design process?

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

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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?