Overview

User challenges: Travel agents sometimes have to open the traveler’s profile once again to be able to pull out some data from there. They have to perform the search from the beginning - it takes time and sometimes a lot of back and forth. They need something that allows them to be able to go back to recently viewed profiles quickly.

The solution: A new feature that needs to be added to the search profile form could allow users to recall a profile or list of profiles that were recently viewed quickly.

The pattern should work on the other search forms: PNR, Proposal, Air, Car, and Hotel with the assumption that PNR and Proposal forms will be redesigned to match with the rest of the forms.

 

Research

  • Online research

  • Search forms & systems’ patterns research

Online research

Decided to start with browsing internet to look for some inspiration. Not many UI examples I was able to find - mostly text field with list of recent searches we see when start interacting with field.

Search forms & systems’ patterns research

I looked through all our primary forms to recognize potential ways to introduce the new feature. Also, I was browsing our application very carefully with the hope that we are using somewhere a pattern that could work for my design challenge. I haven't found anything that would work, but the time spent there was not wasted. My observation and analysis I used later on, during the design process, where, step by step, I explored different options.

 

Ideation

  • Searching history in the text field

  • PNR & Proposal form redesign

Searching history in the text field

In the beginning, I thought that the common idea to include searching history in text fields wouldn't be bad and potentially could work for our forms, so I quickly drew two versions:

 

PNR & Proposal form redesign

Decided to take a pause with the recently viewed profile feature and my focus now was on redesigning PNR and Proposal search forms.

In the process of redesigning the forms, I come up with three more ways to introduce the recently viewed profile feature into search forms:

 

Review and revisions

On the meeting with stakeholders, I wanted to check if we need to search by category for PNR and Proposal - I have seen we do not have so many qualifiers there. In my opinion, the form would be more user-friendly if we could put all qualifiers in one sheet, especially as we have space for this. Altogether, we agreed - we go with simplifying!

That meant, now I was considering only two options:

  • With the link on the top of the form

  • with the Recent button with a dropdown list

 

Final designs

  • List of recently viewed/searched items (drop-downs)

  • Recently viewed/searched feature incorporated in all search forms

List of recently viewed/searched items (drop-downs)

I was ready to start working on lists of recently viewed and searched items. To do this in the best way possible, I researched what kind of data we displayed in the system response for each search type request.

My idea was to group similar pairs of data and present everything in columns. I wanted to keep consistency as much as possible across different search categories, so on each dropdown list, the traveler's names would be in the first column and contact details would be in the last.

When it comes to Air/Car/Hotel searching - I have picked up a set of data that are critical to recognize recent searches.

 

Recently viewed/searched feature incorporated into all search forms

Having prepared layouts for the recently viewed/searched lists, still was not sure what would be the best. I quickly drew both versions for one form and ultimately I decided that going with Button would be the best option. Link would cause a change of placement for the whole search form and this might be a huge disturbance from an accessibility point of view (straw test).

 

Validations

After implementation, we got positive feedback from our users. Their satisfaction increased, especially because of the high rate of time savings. We have heard several opinions that it would be great if this function could work across different work areas - then it would be even more helpful.

With time we will be checking with users, if the set of data describing recent views/searches is the best, or if it is something we can improve.