Encore Global Search

After a successful launch, Encore Search became widely used at Rackspace, as it provided a faster, more intuitive way for Rackers to find results quickly while on the phone with customers. The business wanted to use the same search pattern for more result types—not just accounts and employees, but devices, servers, tickets, and any other results Rackers want to search for when helping customers.

I wanted to be sure that standards were well established and that the user flow and visual design were as flexible and scalable as possible for this data-rich application. Other designers and developers needed to understand the interaction, flow, and how to apply the same principles to new result types, which could be added by any development team. I led a team of two other designers in exploring what changes would be necessary to make the pattern more scalable. We explored adding an advanced search pattern to accommodate more result types, identified questions for research, and considered what kind of experimentation might be useful for user tests to establish a standard for all other development teams to follow.

It's so important to be able to articulate design decisions, especially to non-designers. This was my first time providing documentation about design decisions in this style, and I think it worked well!

You can find video of the interface in action at glynnisritchie.com/design/