So these are just suggestions? I would have liked to see some data backing the claims. "According to usability studies, it is more user-friendly to have no advanced search options" is also pretty weak without linking to said studies. Later the author mentions a study on expected positioning by Shaikh and Lenz without any reference [0].
I guess it's a nice overview but I'd rather read some papers backing up the claims on it than just take the author's word for it. I mean if you'd just link to the relevant papers I wouldn't have to...you know search for them.
I'm also a bit skeptical on all of the advice that contradicts what the landing page of google looks like (it's basically centered and has no magnifying glass icon)
Obviously, just anecdata, but I've worked for 10 years in the search area (enterprise search) and from what I've seen search users fall into two categories. 99% of people never use anything besides the search box. If they don't find what they want, they add more words. Even if you show them that what they want is just one extra click they rather try to find some magic incantation to get what they want from search box usage only. We provided advanced options, facets (only pdfs, only author whatever and so on), usually customized with something the customers deemed relevant, but people just don't use it.
The other 1% are the ultra-power users who use every feature you provide and always push for more. They even learned the query syntax for even more advanced searches than possible in the GUI. There was almost no middle ground.
Haha most of the time I fit in the former category.
The thing is, I wouldn't be surprised if users used search a lot in their day to day life. Google Search. Google Images. Google Maps / Waze. Amazon. Windows/OSX. Yelp. Youtube. Your typical ecommerce website (e.g. B&H, REI, ).
Writing words is an action applicable to all of them and it's something people are comfortable and familiar with. I can type in something ambiguous or improperly spelt in Google and it'll give me the exact answer. And if I get nothing, well maybe it's my own fault, so try something different.
Whereas when it comes to facets, users have to mindful of how it differs according to the results, which is something I can remember as a general power user, but not what I would expect from others. From a visual point of view, the facets/filters can be implemented in different ways which further adds to the cognitive load. The way you interact with filters on Yelp on mobile is different than the way they present it on the web. The filters offered on Amazon is presented differently than that of YouTube or Google Images. Certainly, the implementations make sense, but it's an additional thing to remember for that particular app/website.
And so my unscientific opinion is that a good portion of the population prefer to go with the behavior we do the most and we know is consistent across the board, which is search by text.
IMO _the_ resource on search UI design is http://searchuserinterfaces.com/ - very well researched booked, although getting a little dated (was written before the mobile app boom took off) but for example detailed coverage of the topic at hand - the design of the search box - http://searchuserinterfaces.com/book/sui_ch4_query_specifica... (the whole book is free to read online) e.g.
"Some interfaces allow the searcher to cut-and-paste long swaths of text into the search box, whereas others present short entry forms and limit the number of terms that the system will accept for processing. Researchers have speculated that short query forms lead to short queries. To test this hypothesis, [Franzen and Karlgren, 2000] designed two different query entry form boxes. The first showed one empty line and only 18 visible characters (but would accept up to 200 characters) and the second showed 6 lines of 80 characters each, which allowed arbitrarily long queries to be entered. The authors asked 19 linguistics students to use one of the two interfaces and to find relevant documents for three queries. There was a statistically significant difference between the two conditions, with those using the short box using 2.81 words on average, versus 3.43 for those using the larger box."
[Franzen and Karlgren, 2000]
K. Franzen and J. Karlgren. Verbosity and interface design. Technical report, Technical Report T2000, 2000.
In addition, that usability research is from 2001, and reassessed in 2006, with the conclusion "As technology changes the face of the internet, users’ expectations seem to shift as well." It's hard to wrap my head around how vastly different sites were designed (by and large) over 15 years ago. The basic UI skeletal structure is mostly there, but that's about it I think.
Some of the research still applies, but I wouldn't hold it up as a pinnacle of useful data during a discussion about best practices in 2017.
True, interesting that it doesn't on desktop and that I've mentally saved the desktop version even though I probably search a lot more on mobile overall...granted rarely through the landing page.
Interestingly when you start typing and it goes to result preview page which includes a magnifying glass.
I am thinking the reasoning is google main page and its only job is searching things so they just decided not to add it. results page is a lot more complex so the icon is added
I do like to think it's more philosophical: Google is search … and so much beyond it at the same time. Including a search glyph in the field is almost misrepresentation.
I guess it's a nice overview but I'd rather read some papers backing up the claims on it than just take the author's word for it. I mean if you'd just link to the relevant papers I wouldn't have to...you know search for them.
I'm also a bit skeptical on all of the advice that contradicts what the landing page of google looks like (it's basically centered and has no magnifying glass icon)
[0] Shaikh and Lenz source: http://usabilitynews.org/wheres-the-search-re-examining-user...
Edit: There's also no mention on cultural aspects. Would I want the search button on the other side for visitors who speak Arabic for example etc.