PROJECT OVERVIEW
The innovation team was tasked with creating a proof of concept (POC) for a unified search service—a product designed to give customers a seamless way to search across internal and external platforms.
users currently struggle with fragmented, inconsistent search experiences that waste time, cause frustration, and erode trust in results. Without a reliable, company-wide search solution, many default to external tools like Google—risking lost insights and lowered productivity.
What’s breaking down in our users’ native search journeys?
Could a unified search service finally solve these pain points and empower customers?
To explore this, I led research around three strategic aims:
🎯 Understand User Search Behaviors
Deeply uncover how customers currently search and where they face challenges.
🎯 Validate the Need for Unified Search
Confirm whether a seamless, cross-platform search solves real user problems.
🎯 Shift Focus to User-Centered Design
Move the team’s mindset from competitor benchmarking to solving authentic customer needs.
Budget
$1m
Team
Lead UX Researcher, 1 UX Designer
2 Product Owners, 1 Sr. Business Lead
Timeline
4 weeks
Research Goals & Approach
We used a two-pronged research approach to map customers’ native search journeys, uncover unmet needs, and ensure the product direction was driven by users — not competitors.
RG1: Discover users’ behaviors, experiences, and patterns during their native search across multiple platforms.
RG2: Assess whether a unified search capability across company products fulfills a real user need.
RG3:Identify the reasons previous internal search solutions have failed, including product reach, placement, and content issues.
🌱 DISCOVERY
Stakeholder Interviews
Requirements Gathering
🧠 DESIGN THINKING
Affinity Map
🔬 RESEARCH
8 1:1 Interviews
Facilitation Guide
Surveys
Thematic Analysis
💡 SOLUTION DESIGN
Process Flow Map
Internal & External Stakeholder Presentations
⚙️Process | 📦 Artifacts ▸
Intent
Investigate overlapping and divergent user search journeys to reveal where experiences aligned, conflicted, or broke down, providing clarity on what was actually happening for customers.
⚙️ Conducted stakeholder interviews and requirements-gathering sessions to capture perspectives and surface gaps, revealing patterns and priorities in users’ search experiences.
📦 Affinity Map v0
⚙️Process | 📦 Artifacts ▸
Intent
Organized stakeholder insights into patterns and prepared research artifacts to guide user interviews and uncover deeper customer needs.
⚙️ Synthesized stakeholder insights into an affinity map to reveal gaps, overlaps, and alignment across user search journeys.
📦 Affinity Map
⚙️Process | 📦 Artifacts ▸
Intent
Building on insights from stakeholder interviews and affinity mapping, I used a mixed-methods approach to gather user feedback. Interviews captured detailed search behaviors, while a short survey validated themes and patterns at scale.
⚙️ Conducted 8 semi-structured 1:1 candidate interviews to validate the gaps in the affinity map. Follow-up surveys gathered qualitative and quantitative feedback.
⚙️ Applied thematic analysis to synthesize insights, revealing recurring patterns, pain points, and unmet needs in users’ native search journeys.
📦 Facilitation Guide, Survey, Thematic Analysis
⚙️Process | 📦 Artifacts ▸
Intent
Synthesized research into a final process flow that revealed short- and long-term opportunities across users’ search journeys. This showcased UX Research’s strategic role in shaping product direction and cross-platform search strategy.
⚙️ Led internal and external presentations to translate research findings into actionable insights. Developed a high-level process flow to guide solution design and align the team on next steps for the unified search service.
📦 Process Flow Map, Presentations
Challenges
Teams were focused on competitors, not users.
User search data was fragmented and unclear.
Reframed the problem to prioritize real user pain points and validate the need for a unified search solution.
Synthesized diverse insights to reveal patterns, gaps, and high-priority opportunities.
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Key Discoveries
Insight
Solution
Impact
Theme 1
Insight 1: discovery 1 ▸
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Impact
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Theme 2
Insight 2: discovery 2 ▸
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Impact
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Theme 3
Insight 3: discovery 3 ▸
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Solution 3: solution 3 ▸
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Impact
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Theme 4
Insight 4: discovery 4 ▸
They scan for:
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Solution 4: Solution4 ▸
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Impact
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Theme 5
Insight 5: discovery 5 ▸
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Solution 5: solution 5 ▸
To ensure momentum:
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Impact
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