CN Traveler Search
- Rethinking the Travel Search Experience
The core of Condé Nast Traveler website redesign is moving beyond travel to lifestyles. In this case, the search experience, a really important factor for the site, is supposed to represent this concept not only in interactions but also in visual design.
What do users really want to get when they are typing these keywords? The design breaks down several use cases, and repackages the results based users' different needs.
Team:
Art Director(Visual): Aaron Braun
UX Designer: Yanwen Hu
My Role:
Information Architecture
Content Strategy
User Experience Design:
User Flow, Wireframe
Design Concepts
There are several scenarios that users search for content on CNTravel.com: they are looking for travel inspirations, specific cities in their minds, or detailed advices like where to stay or eat. Based on these use cases, the concept of the search experience design is to create different layouts that fit users' needs.
User Scenarios
- destinations:
- travel inspirations:
- editorial packages:
- venues:
Destinations:
When users are searching for a specific city, the system will provide a "destination card," which brings users to an index page collecting every post about this destination
The search results feature a multi-gallery module, which lists the related slideshows and videos
There is a search filter function that users can browse results by content groups, like the editorial results, or the related hotels, restaurants, etc.
Travel Inspirations:
When users are looking for broader inspirations, such as "best cities" or "best beaches," the search engine will provide a list of destinations based on CNTraveler Hot List and Gold List database
Users can also land to a specific destination page if they click one of the destination cards
Editorial Packages:
The Hot List, Gold List and Reader's Choice awards are unique editorial content of Conde Nast Traveler. The search experience is a good place to promote these packages to users as travel inspirations.
- Similar to the destination card, there is an award card which brings users to the award landing page
Venues:
(hotels, restaurants, activities, shopping)
Venues are also the top search keywords on CNTraveler.com, which are also one of the most unique resources of the magazine
When users search for any types of venues, the search filter will first provide venue results, while users still have the ability to click "content" or "restaurant" to get to the other related resources
If users are looking for venues in a specific city, the search result will also provide the destination card of this city
Mobile:
Responsive Design
applied the responsive grid on tablet and mobile breakpoints to ensure the search experience is available across platforms
- created a mobile friendly search experience balancing mobile behaviors and the rich content displaying on the desktop and the tablet breakpoints
