Led Yahoo's strategic initiative to provide a personalized user experience around core use cases, resulting in up to 80% user engagement and major press. Scaled the effort across multiple company divisions.

Led Yahoo's strategic initiative to provide a personalized user experience around core use cases, resulting in up to 80% user engagement and major press. Scaled the effort across multiple company divisions.

Vision

Yahoo's CEO, Marissa Mayer, wanted to usher in a new era of personalized search for Yahoo's global audience. We called this project Search My World, and I was in charge of launching and leading its design. I began my work within Yahoo Search, and expanded the project team's efforts to involve Yahoo Mail, Homepage, Native Apps, and Flickr - transforming it into a truly cross-functional and company-wide effort.

Starting point

Before we began our project, searching for personal information, such as your itineraries for upcoming flights, didn't yield the most helpful results. The results didn't show the information that is most relevant to you.

Yahoo's CEO, Marissa Mayer, wanted to usher in a new era of personalized search for Yahoo's global audience. We called this project Search My World, and I was in charge of launching and leading its design. I began my work within Yahoo Search, and expanded the project team's efforts to involve Yahoo Mail, Homepage, Native Apps, and Flickr - transforming it into a truly cross-functional and company-wide effort.

Starting point

Before we began our project, searching for personal information, such as your itineraries for upcoming flights, didn't yield the most helpful results. The results didn't show the information that is most relevant to you.

Opportunity

Search My World could deliver personalized search results for users who were logged into their email accounts.

Designing the experience

I made this high level wireframe flow diagram to show the interaction design of how a user would navigate to a personalized Search My World experience:

Search My World could deliver personalized search results for users who were logged into their email accounts.

I made this high level wireframe flow diagram to show the interaction design of how a user would navigate to a personalized Search My World experience:

Search My World was designed as a comprehensive experience across multiple content areas including Flights, Events, and Packages.

Search My World was designed as a comprehensive experience across multiple content areas including Flights, Events, and Packages.

Flights

Our team decided on launching with Flights, a compelling use case for people who have upcoming flights and need to access the information quickly. As long as you were logged into your Yahoo Mail account and had an upcoming flight, your personalized search results would appear in Yahoo Search if you used specific search keywords such as your flight number or airline name.

I led the project design team to conduct user research with Yahoo employees to assess privacy concerns, get initial feedback on design prototypes, and prioritize what to work on. I worked with a UX designer who previously had the lead role on the project to get a digest of the key elements to consider, and collaborated with him to uplevel the work into being a compelling user experience. Using product thinking, I came up with the idea for bringing in full-column Flickr photos into Yahoo Search for the first time, in order to get users excited about their destinations.

The Flights feature had a very high conversion rate (CVR) at 80%:

Flights

Our team decided on launching with Flights, a compelling use case for people who have upcoming flights and need to access the information quickly. As long as you were logged into your Yahoo Mail account and had an upcoming flight, your personalized search results would appear in Yahoo Search if you used specific search keywords such as your flight number or airline name.

I led the project design team to conduct user research with Yahoo employees to assess privacy concerns, get initial feedback on design prototypes, and prioritize what to work on. I worked with a UX designer who previously had the lead role on the project to get a digest of the key elements to consider, and collaborated with him to uplevel the work into being a compelling user experience. Using product thinking, I came up with the idea for bringing in full-column Flickr photos into Yahoo Search for the first time, in order to get users excited about their destinations.

The Flights feature had a very high conversion rate (CVR) at 80%:

Events

Search My World continued to gain traction and support from across Yahoo. I led brainstorming sessions with the project team across Design, Product, and Engineering to identify the next verticals we should expand to. We identified Events as what our target audience would find the most compelling. We also sought partnerships with Eventbrite and Evite in order to be able to pull in their info to improve our Events experience.

We were unable to get great images from external partners for Events, and unable to get support to use curated images, so I designed a set of gradient backgrounds that would capture just enough visual attention but wouldn't require much time to load on the page.

Although the inability to access images impacted the feature's success, the Events feature still had a conversion rate of as much as 12%, which was over 5x as high as some typical first search results:

Events

Search My World continued to gain traction and support from across Yahoo. I led brainstorming sessions with the project team across Design, Product, and Engineering to identify the next verticals we should expand to. We identified Events as what our target audience would find the most compelling. We also sought partnerships with Eventbrite and Evite in order to be able to pull in their info to improve our Events experience.

We were unable to get great images from external partners for Events, and unable to get support to use curated images, so I designed a set of gradient backgrounds that would capture just enough visual attention but wouldn't require much time to load on the page.

Although the inability to access images impacted the feature's success, the Events feature still had a conversion rate of as much as 12%, which was over 5x as high as some typical first search results:

Packages

After seeing the high engagement rate on Flights, the Search My World team gained support to continue building new personalized experiences. After looking at user research results, evaluating data quality, and identifying the volume that relevant search queries would trigger, we identified Packages as the second feature to launch.

With Packages, we were unable to feature images as prominently as with Flights, due to our source images coming from third parties, which meant any images we would show would have a widely varying photo image resolution and quality. I was able to include smaller photo thumbnails to still generate user interest, and so that users would immediately recognize that they were looking at the package tracking information for items they had purchased.

The Packages feature had a high conversion rate of as much as 50%:

Packages

After seeing the high engagement rate on Flights, the Search My World team gained support to continue building new personalized experiences. After looking at user research results, evaluating data quality, and identifying the volume that relevant search queries would trigger, we identified Packages as the second feature to launch.

With Packages, we were unable to feature images as prominently as with Flights, due to our source images coming from third parties, which meant any images we would show would have a widely varying photo image resolution and quality. I was able to include smaller photo thumbnails to still generate user interest, and so that users would immediately recognize that they were looking at the package tracking information for items they had purchased.

The Packages feature had a high conversion rate of as much as 50%:

Expansion

After Flights, Events, and Packages, I helped expand Search My World to include personalized search results for Bills, Rental Cars, and Hotels.

Recognition

Search My World was praised by Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer as Yahoo's future in Q2, Q3, and Q4 2014 earnings calls with Wall Street. The press labeled Search My World as Yahoo's competitor to Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana, and Amazon's Alexa.

Product impact

Grew the product from a starting base of a few thousand, to 10M+ unique users per month in US and Canada, within a few months of launch.

Expansion

After Flights, Events, and Packages, I helped expand Search My World to include personalized search results for Bills, Rental Cars, and Hotels.

Recognition

Search My World was praised by Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer as Yahoo's future in Q2, Q3, and Q4 2014 earnings calls with Wall Street. The press labeled Search My World as Yahoo's competitor to Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana, and Amazon's Alexa.

Product impact

Grew the product from a starting base of a few thousand, to 10M+ unique users per month in US and Canada, within a few months of launch.

For my efforts, Yahoo even recognized me as its first recipient of the Yahoo Design Excellence Award with a shiny glass trophy:

For my efforts, Yahoo even recognized me as its first recipient of the Yahoo Design Excellence Award with a shiny glass trophy:

Company-wide impact

Search My World helped transform the world's perception of Yahoo for the better. I designed mockups of Search My World applied to experiences across Yahoo and presented them to the heads of design, product, and engineering across Yahoo Mail, Homepage, and Native Apps. My use of design-as-diplomacy jumpstarted personalized search efforts within these teams, and they consulted me on their design and product interpretation of Search My World within their core products:

Company-wide impact

Search My World helped transform the world's perception of Yahoo for the better. I designed mockups of Search My World applied to experiences across Yahoo and presented them to the heads of design, product, and engineering across Yahoo Mail, Homepage, and Native Apps. My use of design-as-diplomacy jumpstarted personalized search efforts within these teams, and they consulted me on their design and product interpretation of Search My World within their core products:

Yahoo's Native Apps Team incorporated Search My World Flights and Events into Yahoo Today native mobile apps

Yahoo's Native Apps Team incorporated Search My World Flights and Events into Yahoo Today native mobile apps

Yahoo's Mail Team incorporated Search My World Packages across desktop and native mobile

Yahoo's Mail Team incorporated Search My World Packages across desktop and native mobile

Mozilla partnership

Search My World helped land Yahoo's partnership with Mozilla, where Mozilla selected Yahoo Search as its default search engine. For the partnership announcement, Mozilla showed Search My World Flights in its press release.

Mozilla partnership

Search My World helped land Yahoo's partnership with Mozilla, where Mozilla selected Yahoo Search as its default search engine. For the partnership announcement, Mozilla showed Search My World Flights in its press release.

2019 redesign

I thought it would be fun to show what I thought Search My World would look like if I still worked at Yahoo in 2019, given that I already understand the context and business constraints. I redesigned Search My World entirely in Sketch, and showed it inside Yahoo Search's current native iOS app. It was nice to be able to design the entire experience in a way that factored in all the content verticals (Flights, Events, Package Tracking, Rental Cars, and Bills) from the get-go, rather than in a piecemeal way.

2019 redesign

I thought it would be fun to show what I thought Search My World would look like if I still worked at Yahoo in 2019, given that I already understand the context and business constraints. I redesigned Search My World entirely in Sketch, and showed it inside Yahoo Search's current native iOS app. It was nice to be able to design the entire experience in a way that factored in all the content verticals (Flights, Events, Package Tracking, Rental Cars, and Bills) from the get-go, rather than in a piecemeal way.

View my interactive prototype here

View my interactive prototype here

Userbase

Userbase

Flights CVR

Flights CVR

Events CVR

Events CVR