The Design of Sites: Pattern Group J — Making Site Search Fast and Relevant
Pattern Group J of The Design of Sites — three patterns (J1-J3) covering on-site search, from the search box itself through to the results page.
License: © 2006 Pearson Education / New Riders — all rights reserved, no open license; one of the book’s co-authors is a FuguUX founder, which is the basis for citing it here.
Key points
- Search Action Module (J1) — the search box and action button placed consistently on every page, plus the search-selector default/threshold guidance for when a dropdown narrowing the search to a subsection is worth adding.
- Straightforward Search Forms (J2) — why Boolean search syntax and exact-match-only engines frustrate customers, and how to compensate (plain-language phrasing, dictionary/synonym handling, defaulting category searches to “all”).
- Organized Search Results (J3) — how to make a results page usable: relevant per-domain summaries, grouped/organized hits, real hyperlinked titles, log-file-driven tuning for common terms and misspellings, and support for common search tasks (repeated search box, large pagination targets).