local.ch
local.ch
local.ch is a local search engine for Switzerland. It started life as the website for the Swiss yellow pages and phone book.
Design evolution
Before I started work at local.ch there was no User Experience expert in the company. They occasionally worked with a freelance visual designer.
I improved the User Experience and led the evolution of the design. I was a UX department of one. luckily I could count on external support from Jessica, the friendly neighborhood visual designer.
This gallery shows the major evolutionary steps of the site’s UI design:
- Original
- Incremental cleanup and usability improvements
- Complete corporate rebranding and redesign
Rebranding
For the rebranding I worked closely with the branding agency to make their design proposals - like the one shown here - suitable for the web.
View fullsize
Design proposal from the branding agency
Result List, responsive design
We worked on a redesign of the results list pages. One of our goals was to come up with a layout that would work well on various screen sizes. (This has not been implemented.)
Sketches
Paper prototype
Interaction Design
The videos and prototypes below show several Interaction Design solutions and studies I worked on.
Results Preview
Animation of a potential approach for displaying search results previews while the user is typing.
Edit listing
› opening times *
› opening times variant *(with option to repeat opening times)
*****Note: due to a weird rendering bug, it sometimes takes reloading the page a few times to display the opening times layout correctly.
Prototype for editing opening times
Single search field variants
Variants of search assistance and refinements with a one search field approach.
(Please view on YouTube in HD to see details.)
Result list improvements
Presentation of one iteration of result list improvements.
Disclosure
Disclosure of product images inside a result list without leaving the page.
A case for single field search
User tests demonstrating some problems with multiple field searches.
Sliding panels demo
Demo of a layout based on sliding panels.