Overview
I was tasked with creating an entirely new search experience for Thermo Fisher’s main corporate website. ThermoFisher.com is a behemoth of a website with over 100k pages, e-commerce, marketing and research.
Users needed a way to search using a visual typeahead. I worked with the Director of UX to create an experience that targeted two distinct user types: Authenticated users and users that are not authenticated.
Role:
UX Designer/Researcher
Tools:
- Sketch
- Whiteboard
Problem
Thermo Fisher Scientific Users have to sort through several confusing layers to find the products that they are looking for. Our research showed that many users end up frustrated, then resort to using Google to get to their desired product.
Solution
A visual typeahead that renders text and images on the fly.
UX Research
I created an empathy map to isolate the pain points that Thermo Fisher users encounter. I used interviews with our users and existing personas to bullet point their experiences with improvements that are needed. I also created user journeys for current experience and with improvements for scientists and purchasing departments seeking the popular reagent Lipofectamine.
Persona of typical purchasing manager:
From here, I worked with another UX Designer whiteboarding the journey with new immersive search, comparing the same search without immersive search.
I created a User Journey of the current state for the typical Bench Scientist looking for the Lipofectamine reagent
I then created a user journey using guided (immersive) search:
I also studied applicable search patterns on the Baymard Institute site.
It took several wireframes to get the right combination of search and results:
Design
Visual Typeahead
I used a completely visual approach that started with the search box typeahead, this time using a search for "centrifuge". As the user types the user could easily work their way down from product and research categories. With this approach, users would be able to either quickly find the centrifuge they're looking for or filter down to their desired destination.
If the user needed to look through all centrifuges, they would end up on the centrifuges category page. They can sort further by choosing the centrifuge type or by application.
Mobile versions of search and results:
Key Takeaways / Lessons Learned
This version of Guided Search was created as a high-concept model to inspire the business and provide a vision for the future of Thermo-Fisher Scientific search. Scientists are extremely busy people who don’t want to spend any additional time and effort finding what they need to do their research.
My initial versions didn’t push the envelope far enough. When we demoed the first versions, the Head of Product liked where we were going but he felt that it didn’t provide enough inspiration and wow factor. I had to change my idea of where we could take this experience. I ended up learning more about search than I thought I ever could have known.
When we demoed the final version, the Head of Product was completely blown away and excited about where we could go in the future.
