Who is Brandfolder?

Brandfolder is the world’s most powerfully simple digital asset management platform for storing, sharing, and showcasing assets. Their product assists small and large companies with managing thousands of files and assets. Organizations like Slack, OpenTable, Shazam, and HealthONE rely on Brandfolder to deliver consistent, organized, and efficient brand experiences.

USERS: Creative directors, marketing managers, designers, journalists & many more

The Challenge:

Search Function Usability

Improve the search capability to increase it’s effectiveness and improve its intuitive nature, while maintaining simplicity. My teammate and I were challenged to improve the usability of the search feature to increase effective search returns. The goal of our project was to improve the UI to help direct users to a more efficient search and browsing path, without altering disrupting the familiar customer flow.

Problem Areas 

• Search bar visibility

• Indication of category hierarchy & their interaction

• Calling upon two or more assets at a time

• Slow feedback results

• Circumventing the “secret” syntax and back end issues

Feature solution

• Guided Searches with place holder text

• Auto fill/suggestions

• Advanced Filter

• Interaction feedback

• Unique asset auto population

The Solution

We utilized user research and usability tests to design and improve multiple iterations and reach a solution. Our solution incorporated user interaction design patterns to provide feedback and direction to users regarding search results. We also designed an advanced filter capability, in order to provide users with the ability to call upon more efficient search returns.

*Some problems we identified resonated in the back-end code. We had to incorporate this constraint within our design decisions

Solution Scope

Even subtle changes can make a BIG difference   

This is not a site redesign. The question is, how can we improve this site without interrupting the user's familiar flow and causing more frustration? The biggest constraint we had to work around is determining just the right amount of change. 

To start designing for this feature, we had to understand how the product worked, it's overall function and the problems. We put ourselves in the shoes of a new user and complied insight on the problems and creating a stragery . We created a user flow to illustrate the different ways user's could search. Then we performed a heuristic evaluation to identify exactly where the potential problems occurred and why.   

.01  Competitive Analysis + Annotations 

Conducting a competitive analysis helped us assess the strengths and weaknesses of competitors and identify opportunities to formulate ideas for potential solutions. 

Now that we are educated on the product, we could have informative conversations with direct users to gain insight on how they use this product in the workplace. Our goal was to dissect the user’s searching behaviors and needs as well as determining the importance of specific content for the advanced filter feature.     . 

“I think the people who find search usability the hardest are my co-workers that are boomers.The homepage can be overwhelming for them, information overload.”

”It would be helpful for me to be able to filter by orientation since we are mostly searching for images.”

"The search returns can be very slow with little interaction and I’m not sure if my search is registering."