I am building a call center tool user interface. The search consolidates results from multiple sources, - approximately 10. There is crossover between the different sources. For example I cannot always be sure that the answer to a certain type of problem is in a particular source. In a call center, time is quite literally money, so my current plan is to try and find a way to consolidate all the the results into the same page. Our search technology is not sufficiently advanced to be able to rank results between different sources, so a consolidated list is off the table.
What are some patterns I can use here? I have spiked a couple of designs up but I am not happy with either.
I started with option 1) but don't like it as it doesn't scales easily and having multiple frames / scrollbars would start to look very messy. With option 2) I thought by making the results panes collapsible it may look a little cleaner, but still a lot going on. I had thought about using facets, but would still be faced with the same problem of how to display the different results panes.
Really what I am looking for is some examples of patterns, or pages that solve this problem. I should also note that I am not a UX professional, I am a product manager with a background in development and a Balsamiq license!
Answer
In my experience the most result sets are only from one or a few sources. Thus there is no need to have scrollbars or collapsible containers; just display all results and cap the maximum per source.
(I have recently been working on such a search results page, we had 3 source categories and one banner for special keywords. You can see it in full action here and here a bit more empty including the banner.)
This puts the meta-information (from which source a result is) out of the main view. The result itself is more important then to know from which category it comes. And it also makes it possible to scan which categories returned results by looking at the side.
Some tips I just copied from our solution back then, because I think they are good for your situation as well:
- putting the categories to the side as explained above
- usually show maximum three results from each category, put the others behind a link (that shows everything from that source, paginated as with Google)
- hide categories with no results
And some things I also would do (which we didn't do then):
- show more (than three) results from a source if other sources have less or zero
Phil said to open the "more results" in a new page. I would usually open links in the same window, as often people know to find the back button. But in your case, test it! I think in such a high speed place as a call center where they've already accustomed to certain behavior it is important to follow what they as used to.
PS: I think your thought of having everything in one page is good, way better then having to search in different page, not only for fast places. Also, whenever your technology changes to make it possible to rank between the sources: think, design and test again. It might be good to have results grouped by category. However, it might be good to test with ordering categories.
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