Redesigning the advanced search capabilities of a material searching application to improve efficiency and traceability across multiple data fields. Evaluated a proposed persona-based search system and reframed it into an intent-driven search experience grounded in real user behavior.
Problem
The application was set to integrate 1,000 new data fields to meet the diverse needs of multiple departments. While this aimed to improve flexibility and traceability, it also risked adding significant complexity to an already demanding search experience.
User Challenges
Users relied on multi-step searches, dense filters, and memorized field names, making it difficult to locate the right materials quickly. Adding more data would have increased cognitive load rather than improved efficiency. They needed a simpler, more guided way to form queries and discover relevant results.
Business Challenge
Validating a business's proposed solution of a persona-based search system, tailoring filters and data views by role.
The challenges went beyond technical implementation; it was about balancing stakeholder requirements with usability, ensuring the designed outcome remained efficient, intuitive, and trustworthy.
Outcome
Enabling faster and more informed decisions
I designed a scalable, intent-driven search experience that enabled stakeholders to build complex queries and locate the right material with clarity and confidence. Key features, such as context-aware guidance, reusable queries, actionable unmatched results, and customizable data views, simplify workflows and improve usability.
Research also informed future API and metadata integrations, ensuring long-term scalability. These enhancements collectively reduced complexity, boosted search efficiency, and cut the time required to make informed, data-driven decisions.
My Role
Designing for users' intent
I owned the design direction and led co-design workshops that turned a dense, technical search system into an intuitive, intent-driven experience.
My work involved:
Understanding how users approach complex queries through interviews.
Validating assumptions and observing their search behavior through workshops.
Collaborating with PMs and developers to balance usability with technical scalability.
At its core, my role centered on distilling complexity into clarity, crafting interactions that reduced friction, building trust in systems and feedback, and enabling users to navigate vast datasets efficiently.
Design and Research Approach
Understanding Challenges & Validating Assumptions
In collaboration, I conducted user interviews across multiple business departments using the application. These sessions uncovered users’ data requirements, search behaviors, and workflow challenges, validating some aspects of the business hypothesis while revealing deeper issues.
Users struggled more with query formulation, data authenticity, and feedback clarity than with role-based access.
Synthesizing Insights into Opportunity Areas
I synthesized our findings to define two primary opportunity areas for our MVP: search query structure and archived material identification. Across these, three consistent design themes emerged: clarity, flexibility, and feedback, which became the foundation for design opportunity. Ensuring every solution directly addressed an observed challenge rather than assumptions.
Exploring & Testing Design Directions
To test early hypotheses, I facilitated a co-design workshop where users built queries hands-on. This surfaced how they naturally structured searches, preferred terminology, and essential data inputs. User testing revealed that persona-based search added complexity, while guided interactions improved trust and comprehension.
Iteration & Validation
Building on this feedback, we designed and tested two distinct interaction models through A/B testing, gathering qualitative insights. The results informed a scalable guided-search interface that simplifies query formation, prioritizes key filters, and reduces cognitive load, creating a flexible foundation capable of supporting future data expansion.
Impact
The project shifted the organization’s perspective from persona-based assumptions to intent-driven design, grounding decisions in user intent.
Increased user confidence in finding accurate materials.
Improved material discoverability, accelerating downstream processes.
Enhanced traceability and visibility, enabling more informed decision-making
Reduced time spent manually verifying search results.
Ultimately, the project established a new design foundation that balanced business flexibility with user clarity and trust.
Reflection
This project reaffirmed the importance of evidence over assumption; that even well-intentioned business goals need validation through user behavior.
Guiding the team through this shift taught me how to balance between organizational priorities and user realities, while keeping the design grounded in clarity and purpose.
Designing a technically complex system with intuitive usability demanded strategic prioritization, iterative testing, and close collaboration with data and engineering partners.
Most importantly, it reinforced my belief that impactful design isn’t about adding capabilities, but about reducing complexity so users can focus on what truly matters.