Making enterprise search easier to navigate for Disney's physical security platform
B2B • Enterprise SaaS
Overview
Analysts use Global Search to effectively find results among thousands of incidents across Disneyland. As designers, our team aims to identify the pain points to enhance the searching experience for analysts and optimize efficiency for the business.
As UX Designer
• Research
• Problem Analysis
• User Testing
• Iterations
As UI Designer
• UI Components
• High-Fi Mockups
• Documentations
• Prototypes
Collaboration
• 3 Designers
• 1 Product Manager
• 1 QA
• 1 Developer
The Problem
Security analysts use Global Search to find incidents across multiple modules and sites. Analysts were searching through thousands of results while working across 6 modules and 20+ sites.
The challenge was not simply finding more results.
2–3 Analysts
6 Modules, 20+ Sites
Thousands of Results
Research
The project had two major constraints:
Limited access to end users
We could not directly interview client analysts during the project.
Limited development capacity
One developer had approximately one month to implement the improvements.
Rather than treating these as blockers, I adapted the research approach.
I gathered feedback from internal engineers, developers, and QA team members who worked closely with the product and understood common user issues.
I then combined this feedback with product knowledge, existing workflows, and usability testing to identify the highest-impact problems we could address within the timeline.
Task
Find a specific alarm across multiple sites and modules.
Feedback Session Goal
Evaluate the system’s usability and identify pain points to gain deeper insights
Problem Analysis
After analyzing all the user feedback, it was found that most of users experienced similar issues, which can be grouped into three major problems.
67%
had difficulty locating the right site in the search results.
83%
spent time understanding how the results were structured.
100%
felt there were too many layers to navigate before reaching the result.
The problem was not the amount of information. It was how the information was organized.
HMW
How might we help analysts find the right result faster, without adding more complexity to the search experience?
Design Decisions
Given the constrained development time, I aim to concentrate on high-impact changes with minimal effort to improve readability and productivity.
Working closely with the developer to understand the constraints, we minimized design changes and decided to reuse some components, saving valuable development time.
Filter
Prioritize information and enhance readability to guide users in filtering specific results
Search Results
By enhancing the accuracy and relevance of results, users can save time, ultimately making the search process more effective and user-friendly
Group by Site
The new structure provides users with more space to view results and a visual hierarchy to enhance the readability
Design Changes
Filter Enhancement
The original search experience showed a large amount of information without enough guidance on how to narrow the results.
I reorganized the filters to make the most useful criteria easier to find and understand.
Search Results Enhancement
Users needed to spend time interpreting the structure of the results before they could decide which one to open.
I improved the result layout and added clearer context so users could understand what each result represented and where it came from.
Group by Site Enhancement
With results coming from 20+ sites, users needed a quick way to understand where each result belonged.
I grouped results by site to create a clearer information hierarchy and reduce the number of nested layers.
This gave users more context while scanning and made it easier to compare results across sites.
Outcomes
The redesigned search experience helped users find and understand results more efficiently.
The feedback and results indicate that the new design has significantly improved the overall user experience. Users can quickly find the searched results, leading to increased work efficiency.
67% More
More Satisfactory User Experience
Users can quickly find information or content, leading to a more efficient and satisfactory user experience.
20% Less
Less Time Search For Results
Global search results display relevant matches with access hints, reducing the time and effort required to access relevant information.
Takeaways
Working within a one-month development window also taught me to balance user needs with technical constraints and prioritize changes that could create meaningful impact without requiring a complete system redesign.
If I continued the project, I would validate the experience with a broader group of external analysts and explore opportunities to improve the underlying search architecture.