10 ways of Searching - from Meh to gold Standard

Last week, we looked at the importance of search in Google Workspace. This time, I'd like to point out how that works in practice in the products. It will hopefully give you a nice overview of Google's application design patterns. Here is your x-ray through the most popular G Suite products.

Getting search right is probably as valuable. Getting it wrong is as expensive.

Not really built for search

To say that search is an afterthought may be too harsh for these - but the search experience is definitely not integrated. Searching will take you out of what you normally do, into a different screen, and display results in a different way than you are used to.

Search is also not very important for these services - you usually do not expect to rely on search to do what you need. You can argue that this is due to the product: "Who wants to search for events when you can look at your calendar - d'uh!" I prefer looking at this the other way. If search was implemented like the gold standard (see below), you would search all the time and not even think about it. Does this mean I could design a better calendar search - absolutely not. But "I'd know it when I see it".

Calendar

Calendar has a "specialist" search - while most people search for titles, descriptions or people, other parameters are available. Results are displayed in a list - uncommon for events.

Drive editors

Technically they are filtered Drive views. You can't access this view from within a document.

Sites

Sites will let you search the Site you are on. Also - this is the old title of this blog! Click here to take a look where the name came from.

"Kind of" built for search

Search is important for these services and gets the job done - but the implementation doesn't feel natural. Compared to the gold standard (see below), you still have to think a lot about search.

Groups

I have several gripes with search for groups. Groups requires searching by design, and it gets the job done, but is a confusing specialist search. The layout definitely needs a makeover.

Chat

Chat needs search - it is fast and powerful, but it takes a bit of getting used to. It is also not central to Chat - you usually look in your chat threads before searching.

The gold standard

Search for these applications is so extremely well implemented that you forget the product doesn't need search. It works so well and integrates so smoothly, that it just feels like the application was built around search.

Take Gmail as an example: Search works so well that you can organize tens of thousands of emails with only search. No folders, stars, colours, flags are needed (although you can use them).

Drive

Drive search is legendary - it can look inside documents, it can use dozens of keywords and it can search items in your corpus that aren't yours. This sounds simple, but is an engineering marvel. Drive is a flat database, the folders you see aren't folders in the classical sense

Contacts

Keep

You may not nominate these for this list, but they fit the gold standard: It's "fuzzy search" without keywords, they present results in the default view (no need for a "search screen").

Gmail

Gmail is built around search. When you approach Gmail without trying to emulate other clients, you can glimpse what it truly is: A giant, flat database of emails. Thanks to a powerful search, it can do without any other design paradigm (such as folders, hierarchical lists, timelines).

The universal search box

Cloud search takes the gold standard one step further (is there a platinum standard...?): It is true "Google Search", implemented across your entire corpus, your entire (corporate) brain.

Cloud Search

Well, Cloud Search is search, so this feels like cheating.

Thanks for indulging me on the journey through search - it is an important topic to get maximum benefit out of the products we use. It also makes it easier to see the "big lines" in Google Workspace's product development. Thanks for reading!

#strategy #cloudsearchPublished 2019-03-12 by Holger Matthies.Modified 2022-10-29 by Holger Matthies.Written listening to Federico Albanese - The Houseboat and the Moon

Page updated

Report abuse