Meiyi's Project - Douyin Precise Search

Project Background

What is Douyin?

- Tiktok’s China twin
- Top short video app
- Born: in 2016 at ByteDance
- Now: 1 billion+ active users

Why search matters?

- 4k million daily active times of search
- 550 million+ active users searching on Douyin, more than on Baidu and WeChat
- The next strategic growth point of Douyin
- Douyin search : around video content, multidimensional

Market Research

01 Douyin as China’s most popular short video app

02 Search by content in individual apps

03 Competitor Analysis: searching in popular apps of China

Color Code /Analysis Dimension

Key Findings

Experience: similar within app types, different between app types
All apps are striving to let users find things precisely:

Wechat: concise interface; entrance by sorts
Zhihu: guide users to “mine” tab during search
Google: matches with search history during search
e-commerce apps: detailed filters by tabs, filters, and sorts on tabs

Many have the Speech input:

Amap: voice assistant “De De”
Baidu: voice broadcast on recommendations

User Research

01 Stakeholders

Potential and current Douyin users:
- Viewer
- Creator
- Advertisers: search ads

02 User Portrait

Statistics Summary:
- Female 48%, Male 52%
- Age: 19-30
- City: new first-tier

03 User Opinions

Source:

- User interview from my friends who use Douyin
- Online opinions from Zhihu.com

Complaints: “can’t find precise targets”

Viewer: can’t find the video I just watched, after accidentally refreshed
can’t find by content of the video, but only by its title and tags
Creator: can’t find the video I just uploaded, worry it can’t be recommended

Current solutions:

Always attracted by new videos, through hot list and recommended videos
Other app to search videos, like Youtube and Bilibili
On Douyin: don’t use “search” often, watch videos more there instead

Suggestions:

Collect browsing history
Deconstruct & redefine video contents

Needs in summary:

Can find target video precisely
Easy to find: precise filter, concise result presentation

04 User Journey Map

Current Solution

Current Problems:

Filter:
1. inconsistent pattern: when searching different words
2. messy information architecture: “overall” and “time” looks more important than “filter tags” as “filter” overflow too much areas

Tags:
1. Long list of many tags
2. Easy to scroll out of page

Ideation

01 Design Goal

User Story:
I want to quickly find the video I am looking for on the app.

Problem Statement:
How might we allow Douyin users to efficiently find the videos they want?

02 Design Principles

03 Sketch & Ideas

Before Search:

Keep original access entry:
easy to find: on each page’s right upper corner
Add voice input:
save effort and increase accessibility

During Search: ‍

Related suggestions:
search history + tag recommendation:
interpret and speed up search
Voice input on the keyboard:
easy to be detected and used

Filter Results

Filter

❌ 1:
- Long routes: take 2 steps
- Results cover the title of the tag
- "recent " is not related to time span

✅ 2:
- Consistency in pattern
- Short route: delete the triangle and show tags directly