Challenge

SAIC's Web and Emerging Technologies team came to realize that many employee users were not finding the expected information when using the site's global search function. Many employees were confused why they were getting "no results" pages even though they had entered one or more words and clicked "search." At the same time this issue arose, the Web team decided that it wanted to improve the visual "look and feel" of the site's header and footer elements to reflect a fresh new image for the site. The team wasn't sure, however, whether a new design concept would be well-received by a majority of employees.

Solution

We used our Navigation Design service to address the search function issue. An analysis of available server logs indicated that the feature's sub-optimal design was causing many people to inadvertently search a staff directory rather than the site itself for the intended topical information. Users were getting the wrong results pages but not understanding why. We worked closely with the site's management, visual designer and developer to design a new "search scope" mechanism.

We used our Usability Testing service to assess whether employees understood the new global search mechanism and its relationship to other content and links on the page. The participants were also asked to give their opinion of the new header and footer's color scheme.

Results

The new search mechanism was made available to a subset of employees for a few days on the development server. An analysis of the server logs for those days indicated that a much higher percentage of users were getting the correct search result pages. The new mechanism resulted in far fewer search errors, significantly reducing information finding time/costs.

The series of usability test results confirmed that the new search mechanism was intuitive and nearly error-free to use, and that the new color scheme was appealing to a majority of the participants. These results allowed the design team to confidently implement the new design, which improved both the site's image and the team's perceived value.

"Before" screen sample

"After" screen sample