Search results count needs to be more useful for food-seekers

[fancyham]

Overview

What did you observe or what is a likely problem?

Right now, our search results say "604 results" which, while accurate in that that's the total number of matching results... while that's a nice bragging point for us, that's not a very useful number for food-seekers in their immediate task because it's not relevant to their current search (because they're unlikely to travel across LA to access a pantry on the other side of the county) for nearby food.

What is the user trying to do?

The user is probably trying to find nearby pantries. So if we show, say, the nearest 20-30 to the searched address, that should be more than enough. While it's possible a food-seeker might look at the 31st, but they'd probably want to explicitly expand their search area, or better, they'd probably simply move the location they're searching on.

How many people are / will be having this problem?

Currently, everyone on desktop.

Discussion and possible Solution(s)

What device is this happening on / what is the user’s context?

Currently this only occurs on the Desktop -- the tablet portrait and mobile modes don't show total # of search results.

Since desktop has more space, we could perhaps show better information.

Something like "30 nearest locations (out of 604 total results)" when searching on a point address

Or, if searching for a region:

"30 nearest locations (there are [X] locations within "[RegionName]")

If we can add pages, that would also help users. For example: Page 1 shows locations 1-10, page 2 shows 21-30, etc.

Discussion and possible Solution(s)

Possible challenges, solutions?

Resources/Instructions

How do others solve this?

• Look at other web-based map websites like Yelp, Google, etc.

Things to think about?
What pieces of information are most useful for the user on this screen?

Action items

• Discuss with Research and other designers, PMs, etc. what information is needed up there?
• Mock up alternatives for the results.
• Should there be pages of results? On what screen sizes? (desktop only?) If pages, does that change the text? ("showing 1-10 of 604 results, sorted by distance").
• Create designs and specifications with logic for devs
• Devs create beta
• Test it and revise
• Once it's good, launch

Also, consider a staged approach -- changing it little by little on the public site might be fine as long as devs are willing to make quick changes like that.

[fancyham]

Adding John's Oct 14, 2024 mockups:

Hope it's okay -- I moved the design over to its own Figma page #2116

Thanks John, your designs spurred a good discussion!

Some thoughts we came up with during the meeting (this is a way more complex than it seems at first glance).

For one, the address that the user enters is currently auto-completed to a full address, so we'd be displaying:
"Results for "Los Angeles, California 90015, United States" (23 locations)"
-- which can be a bit wordy.

And we figured there are at least a few different flows that we need to account for, and each might have its own text variant:

1. User enters an address
2. User uses GPS button
3. User pans the map (currently there is no 'search here' button... might we want to add it?

Also, we were talking about what's actually useful for users... showing the 10 (or 20) closest locations to an address (or center of the map) seemed the most useful. Then allow users to go to next closest set using pagination (or by panning map and clicking 'search here')

Which brings up these pagination and pin numbering/listings issues... it seems to be related... what users want are things near them... 10 seems like a good number to start with if we were to guess:

• [Feature: Visually indicate which item in the results list matches with which map pin]
• Feature: Enable user to tell which item in the results list matches which map pin Feature: Enable user to tell which item in the results list matches which map pin #1710

Shienny (added you to this issue so you get updates) said that she'll try to put together idea sketches for flows to show some possible options we discussed, also (she's our of office from October 21st -Nov1st. so will try her best).