Software search and downlaod
What is it about?
Searching a software is never so easy, you have to know a lot of things version, OS compatibility and what else. The project aims to design an experience to ease the search and download of software.
Whom are we building this for?
Our primary users are the Bing users and Windows OS user.
What is the design goal?
The primary goal is to reduce user pain point in the search for software and download without a hassle.
In addition, a software is associated with a particular file type.
As a secondary goal, we have also tried to provide information of the file type.
What was the impact?
Download answers had +5 numbers on SBS (side by side) against competitor search engine.
The file extension experiences helped in stitching user flow from windows 7 OS to Bing, led to an increase in Bing DSQs (Distinct search queries) by 21M + monthly
The reel
Rethinking about the brief?
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When do users look for software?
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How do users decide to download a software?
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What are the other software platforms for software download and do they fulfill our need?
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How do we ensure authority to the answer?
User Pain Point
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Finding the right software
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Deciding which one software best suits the needs.
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The user has to rely on software hosting platforms, which are often not authoritative.
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Finally after getting the software, how to use it to perform the task.
Types of user query : from 'Bing logs' and 'IE logs'?
Explicit search query
When Software name is known.eg: "Download VLC player"
The category is known.eg: "Download media player"
The file type is known.eg: "Download flv player", "download rar opener"
Implicit search query
when a particular file type is not known.eg: "how to open .csv file" ".csv file"
Scenario 1
When the user is searching by the task or category.
inferred intent mode : exploratory
Proposed solution for
Category "Visual Studio extensions and plugins"
Whole page experience on bing.com
Scenario 2
When the user is searching by software name
inferred intent mode : non-exploratory
Scenario 3
When the user is donot know what to search for
inferred intent mode : research
Operating System entry points
Apart from the organic entry point, there was one more entry point for most of the Windows user, which was from the operating system.
Whenever there is an unrecognized file, the user always ends up on a dead unmaintained screen. As a strategy, we thought of linking those users to the SERP so as to help these set of users.
Unrecognised file
Windows suggestion to search on web
Generic information page about the file extension
Proposed design solution
We proposed to
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get rid of the intermediate page
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introduce a entry point to Bing.com
Primary intent is opening the file.
Case 1: When there is a popular software for a category
Popular software is given primary space followed by similar software.
The secondary intent involved the learning about the file extension type.
User trust is crucial, metadata such as "official site" is added along with price information
Case 2: When there is no popular single software
Case 3: Disambiguity scenario when there are two file types for the same extension
Case 4: In case we do not have curated answer, we would scrape and show EQNA (entity QNA) answer to satisfy the user intent followed.
Key Learnings
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User trust is crucial and special attention is required to fulfill it.
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Integrating designs with the right entry point can bring major impact.
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Working across different team enabled the opportunity of understanding complexities and ways to solved them
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