Background

• The company was leveraging a third-party OSS/BSS web app to run its day-to-day operations
• Many of the functions of the third-party OSS/BSS had already been migrated to the new proprietary app, but search was particularly subpar

My role

• Although this feature was not part of my vertical in the software, I volunteered to tackle this endeavor out of curiosity

Project goal

• Understand the needs of our end-users to see if a revamp was truly necessary
• If necessary, collaborate with an Engineer lead and Product manager to understand how to leverage and integrate with existing search engines

Constraints

• “Side-quest” project
  • Search would not be the main focus for any team
  • A lead engineer would dedicate only spare time to this project
  • As a designer, I should also not be dedicating too much time on it

Research

How the third-party OSS/BSS search work

How Slack search work

How Apple Spotlight work

Conclusion — form follows function