Born out of the insights from the UX Research, it was clear that a thread on how we can utilize user feedback on Search and The Archives would greatly improve our search for Archivi.ng users. To define this thinking, I will Map Out All The Ways We’ll Improve Search In 2025 in the doc that will serve as a reference point for all design and technical improvements on search.
I will now go ahead to classify this in this format - Pain Points & Solution/Opportunity, where pain points cover current challenges with search and solution reflects the design solution to improve the pain points that will provide seamless access to the archives.
| Pain Points & Challenges | Design & Technical Solution |
|---|---|
| Search results not mostly related with search entry | Ensure that there is a smooth logic flow for tagging papers to make them error free and return accurate results |
| Lack of precision in the search algorithm which is related to limited search parameters and how results show up | Improve the search results algorithm to improve result relevance and exclude irrelevant data. |
| Only one form of data - newspapers, which can be limiting when facilitating deep research | Other forms of media data like audio and video should be implemented. Provide a gallery of media and footage to support research work. |
| There needs to be a way for users to be able to find closed data on specific search like a finding aid. | Introduce a finding aid and cross reference exchange system |
| There needs to be a way to geo-reference information to keep research data concise | Tag papers and information to geo-political zones to help people interpret data and interact with the data geographically. |
| There are limited results per page on search results | Expand results per page with highlights and contextual data |
| Inaccessible API in raw form | Introduce advanced search filters (e.g, by title, brief summary, data, author, and publication name) and Bulk downloads for large data retrieval: Multiselect pages and clippings and export tool for download (ZIP and PNG). To enable users take control and manipulate their own data directly from the website. For example, download a particular search across a given parameter. |
| Limitation in keyword highlighting within newspapers, mostly affects content discovery | Introduce keyword highlights within newspaper results to speed up content discovery process. |
| There are challenges for new users finding specific results through name and topic searches | Introduce tips on how to get started quickly with search like an “How our search works”. |
| Some users need more in-depth research material in a structure format | Introduce scholarly and academic journals and reports |
| Currently no way to be informed when new search results open and when the archives are expanded | Introduce a search alert feature where you can save the terms that you search and put an alert for it. So that when the terms or search come up, they get notified. I think it would feel more personalized. |
| There’s no way to bookmark and save search searches | Introduce Bookmarks and Save features where users can name name bookmarks by title with uggestions of things that are related to a search a user is working on i.e Auto save search history |
| Limited newspaper data context | Provide users with the ability to access different types of data from papers (Eg. Crime stories, Trivia) in a collection |
| Navigation on newspaper page is not seamless | Make it easy to flip through pages accurately with navigation without having to scroll down |
| Inability for users to continue where they left off in the search. | Introduce Continue searching - like a “continue watching like Netflix” for users to be able to come back to results they were viewing |
With this documented. We can now batch each pain point and solution based on priority levels and begin design and implementation.