Exploring areas of improvement to the filter system to improve the user experience, enabling users to quickly and effectively refine their interests and narrow down results.
roles
Information architecture, taxonomy and exploration (wireframing)
After a web audit, we discovered that the current methods of filtering events weren't working. They gave users no results, which isn't ideal for a business, especially when Baltic has a wide variety of events and activities throughout the year.
Imagine being an end user; you search for an event at Baltic to go to with family or friends next weekend. But some of your searches turn out to be completely empty, and others come back with events that aren't relevant to your filters.
From the above scenario, we started to work on improvements to search; we refined the existing filters, then removed and added new categories – all with the aim of improving findability and discoverability.
“The first rule of e-commerce design remains: if the customer cannot find the product, the customer cannot buy the product.”
— Nielsen Norman Group - Ecommerce Usability Improvements
Explore ways to improve searching and filtering for events and exhibitions
How to show closed days when users are searching for events and exhibitions using calendar
How to give users suggestion when the ‘no results’ are displayed
After a thorough audit of the current filter system, we uncovered the areas needing improvement. As you can see above, we simulate a search for an exhibition for ages 16+, and no results are returned.
This led to a deeper dive to investigate whether all the options and categories were actually functional at all.
The same thing occurred with the calendar view; this created frustration and confusion for end users.
In this scenario, the date selected (and highlighted) shows the current day and a closed day that shows no results. This is a missed opportunity to communicate and suggest alternative events.
If users are looking for events on a closed day, this can lead to disappointment and confusion, which could make them leave the website altogether and potentially negative feedback
We set about exploring potential solutions and how others have solved the problem on similar sites. This helped us with two key insights:
- New ways to show closed days/days in the filter
- How to restructure the layout of the filter
Our first solution was to create two main categories where users can select their interests. This helps to stop 'no results' in the search along with increasing results, which is extremely important for business and increases conversions.
We also restructured the filtering options to eliminate unnecessary items and activities, making it a more manageable list relevant to the user. This should help improve the personalized experience while having constant visibility of the impact and performance of personalization on the filtering experience.
Another great implementation was introducing a recommended alternative when there are no matching results based on the user's filters. This allows the filtered search to always give a result based on the users' needs and the opportunity to present suggestions available at Baltic.
This has the potential to improve the user experience and add tremendous value to the filter and search functionality of the website.
Users need to be able to filter events and exhibitions according to their interests and preferences. If they can't adequately filter and personalize these, only seeing relevant items will restrict their ability to find what they need.
The recommendations were based on similar businesses we put through user testing. This testing uncovered the same issues that we faced in this project, further helping us tailor our solution to make the filter system even more effective.
Coming soon
GAMES AID
