Lisa Peterson

Lisa Peterson

Image Search Redesign

UX initiated, complete redesign that did the impossible (removed blue borders!) Press release

UX initiated, complete redesign that did the impossible (removed blue borders!)
Press release

UX initiated, complete redesign that did the impossible (removed blue borders!) Press release

Increased time on site & long clicks

Increased time on site & long clicks

Introduced infinite scroll & changed the look of Search

Introduced infinite scroll & changed the look of Search

Image Search Redesign

Google built Image Search in 2001 and kept the same UX in place for the next decade.
Years later, I joined the established team as the only UX designer and worked with over a dozen engineers and 3 PMs.

Lead UX Designer

·

5 month project

Before

Before

We had a very small space to work with, and were constantly squeezing new features into it.

Additionally, the overall experience was regulated by outdated corporate policies. The added frame at the top of the landing website provided limited benefit and often confused people.


Google built Image Search in 2001 and kept the same UX in place for the next decade. I was brought on the team as the UX designer and was tasked with adding several features to the current design. This became very difficult, there was competing CTAs and was quickly becoming unusable.

Building a case

Building a case

I began to look at sessions that contained a random sampling of our top searched terms.

Patterns began to emerge and helped to bring awareness to the differences in our users' goals. it was clear that our current success metrics (clicks on an image) wasn't right, sometimes the user goal was to endlessly scroll without clicking on anything.

I created a user journey map with all of this data. This helped me define where our features made the most sense.

Instead of pushing all of our features onto the same small space, we could expose the functionality when it made sense in the users' processes.

I shared this work with the team and we officially kicked off a redesign effort.

Lo-fi

Lo-fi

I created different rough sketches to discuss feasibility with the rest of the team.

We narrowed the choices down to three, very different, experiences.

We began to launch a series of A/B tests on the current UI to test out long held beliefs. The PM and I were able to prove that removing meta data and blue borders did not affect the CTR.

I worked closely with UER to run rapid iterative tests on these three concepts. The engineering team was able to create a playground which allowed participants to search for any image they wanted in all three UIs.

We'd make refinements after every few sessions and eventually ended up with two options to bring to the executive team.

Launch

Launch

We had approval to launch an infinite scroll and introduce an intermediary interaction 'full-size image', which allowed the user to bypass the landing page.

The new landing page removed the frame and showcased the image and additional Google features. We also gained approved to experiment with experiences that pushed the envelop in other countries to start collecting data.

The metrics were overwhelmingly positive and the new UX rolled out globally. The strong results (including significantly higher engagement, increased time on site, and a substantial lift in long clicks) prompted the Search teams to reconsider the balance between user experience and their overly cautious fear of infringement.

Lisa Peterson

Lisa Peterson