Academia.edu
Accelerating the world's research
User experience, research, product management
Improving usability with simplicity & fun
A prior redesign of the profile page had regressed a lot of beloved functionality and confused users a lot.
I designed and prototyped delightful, tactile ways to bring back paper sorting & categorization the page.
Fixing search on the world's largest academic network
Search is about more than only the interactions. We interviewed academics to find out what makes a paper relevant to them and how they conduct research online. I built a browser extension to test variations in the search algorithm, vastly improving relevance.
And I designed the interactions, too :)
It all starts with placeholder text! It seems the same as it was before, but it's all new under the hood.
Research found that people browse about the same topic several times, so the zero-state focuses on getting back to what you were working on.
Once you start typing, searching paper titles starts as the default. This is over 80% of searches on academia.
The search results can index across papers, authors, universities, research interests, and job openings.
Relevance, recency, and popularity are the various search filters.
Academia will suggest to follow searches you make often to be notified of new papers on a topic.
You can do a lot more than search paper titles, however...
Adding filters from the search box makes searching a breeze.
As you add filters from the search bar, the suggestion text reads back your query in plain english.
This helps less tech-savvy users understand how filters work.
It can handle complex filter queries...
...Like multiple fields...
...Field and author...
...university...
And while incredibly uncommon, extreme power usage works great.
The second most common search is for people specifically.
When updating search to include paper searches, we didn't want to lose the ability to quickly get to a profile page
So selecting a username first sends you straight to the profile page.
Voila! Who knew Carl Perkins
For browsers or people exploring large search results, filters can be added on the search results page.
Updating the filters updates the query as well, teaching users how search suggestions can work.
We did lots of research to find which filters were the most important, and which filters librarians and academics rely on the most.
Here's an example of the most complex edge case, for filters.
An academic network needs a way to facilitate communication
We overhauled the messages section of the product to facilitate easier conversations and better triaging for those who received tons of messages.
I created the specs and interactions and worked with Max Schwartz on the final visual designs.
User-centered process
We implemented a process of defining goals, writing scripts to evaluate concepts with users, and rigorously synthesizing the information afterwards.
I worked with Academia to implement a user-centered product approach by testing ideas and talking to users frequently.
