The goal of the project is to revamp the search experience on Slideshare.net as it looked dated and stagnant. Plan was to release updates in staged manner and introduce features that are missing rather than just changing the look of page.
We started with user interviews on how they feel about our search and what they miss, we also collected data on how users use our search where they drop off and how many slides they consume after first search. We had two different versions of same page for desktop and mobile so i took the initiative to introduce responsive layout in Slideshare and based new search page on Foundation framework which was later followed in all new pages that are designed. I designed two variants for the page both in list and grid layout and both were received very well by users and our unique CTA increased by more than 15% in first stage of changes. Stage 2 and stage 3 changes have been planned for 2nd and 3rd quater respectively.
We conducted thorough user research by way of direct interview, surveys, eye tracking and using google analytics data and founs some core issues with the old design. Users were not noticing the filters and found description not relevent at all the times. In our redesign we tried to include all the missing pieces be it be auto suggest, bigger thumbs, easy and upfront filters, user and content filtering in auto suggest and more.
First stage of changes have been pushed live in 1st quarter of 2015 and it is being appriciated by users as unique CTA has increase by 15%.
