Whenever one searches for products online, they have this great option of filtering. A wonderful feature implemented by veteran UX designers, which is still in wide use today.
Thanks to this feature, users can narrow down the search results to their requirements. There is a slight hiccup though, this feature only helps in giving results based on the users' knowledge of the products.
There are a certain set of users who would like to view all products barring some that are not necessarily covered by said filters.
I faced this same problem that day searching for books in Flipkart. I am a guy who reads any genre other than romance.
While browsing I was ready to buy any good book that had a good rating, I wanted to remove the romance genre from my search. That wasn't possible.
On certain websites, there is a feature to select all options and then the user can deselect a few to overcome the above problem.
This is tedious and is not necessarily good UX.
Other Real Life Examples
L
et us consider a case of job hunting. Suppose Nomad Nick was searching for a UX opportunity in Europe. He loves to move where his work takes him, but due to certain reasons, he can't work in the UK, Germany, and Malta.
How would he search for jobs?
Given the existing job hunting platforms, these are the existing options.
Google
LinkedIn
AngelList
C
onsider a situation where Mobilefreak Mark needs to buy a mobile phone. He has a certain price range and specifications, but doesn't want to buy products from XYZ, ABC due to his earlier experiences and his friends' suggestions.
How would he proceed?
Given the existing e-commerce platforms these are the existing options.
Flipkart
Amazon
There are many examples once you try to identify this problem in your digital search queries. Unless a product does good in the market, it is not given any exposure. What if you missed your dream job just cause you didn't search for it right?
There are times when you know what you want,
but many-a-times opportunities lie in places
you never knew before!
You might say almost all users (General users)
already know what they want,
but there are a few (Extreme users)
who face this problem on a day-to-day basis.
The following is my proposed solution for these extremes.
Add an Exclude Option
During the search process, giving the user a
feature to exclude certain possible options
can solve this problem.
This option shows all results excluding the ones the user selected.
This benefits both the user and the businesses. How?
Let us solve the Nomad Nink's problem using the above-proposed solution statement for a better understanding.
These are all the possible options for Nick to work in Europe.
Nick can't work in the UK, Germany, and Malta hence does not want to see the opportunities over there and feel bad about it. Therefore he excludes the same in his job hunting website.
He initially adds Europe in his include bar.
Later he adds UK, Germany and Malta in his exclude bar.
Nick now obtains his results free of opportunities he knows he can not/will not take.
Trivial Wireframe
Tagging methodology must be hierarchical and thereby, linked.
Business Problems Solved
Given the way we currently filter out products, the user can only filter brands he/she knows. Their lack of knowledge on the other brands, stops them from viewing them.
People buy products only based on what they know, because that's how it's been till date. Not much of a choice is given to them. Giving them the knowledge of new products is one thing the above solution statement can do. It increases the chances of possibly better products being viewed.
This can be a huge benefit to businesses as their products are now visible better than before.
The basic principle guiding this research was:
"There are times when you know what you want, but many-a-times opportunities lie in places you never knew before!"
This is how I found and tried to solve a UX problem we face. Many don't see it as a problem unless told about the problem.
This is my way of solving it though. If you have a better way and would like to share it with me, don't hesitate to shoot me an email!
