Search that
actually finds it

Rebuilding the fastest way into the app

Search is how fans cut straight to what they want — a match, a player, a highlight. FanCode's existing search was marked by inefficiencies and user dissatisfaction: people struggled to find relevant content quickly, which drove search abandonment and weak engagement with the end-points (Matches, Stats, Videos and more). I ran an in-depth audit of the experience and proposed a redesign that addressed the problems I found.

Pulling the old search apart, problem by problem

Before designing anything new, I picked the existing search experience apart heuristically — annotating every point of friction across the empty landing state, the keyboard, the autosearch behaviour and the way results were ordered and styled.

Landing state — simpler hints needed, no keyword suggestions, an unclear "auto search" and a wasted empty page.

Results state — static ordering, no synonym search, weak grouping, look-alike tags and tiny thumbnails.

Listening to how fans actually search

I analysed the top search queries over six months, alongside the click-through rates on their results. Two behaviours stood out and shaped the whole design — fans don't type the way the old search expected them to.

Query analysis — six months of top searches and their CTRs, revealing how fans phrase what they're looking for.

A landing page that does work before you type

The biggest waste was the empty state. The new search landing surfaces useful content the instant it opens — and the keyboard comes up immediately, so fans can type or tap straight away.

• Trending searches — what everyone's looking for right now
• Hotlinks — one-tap shortcuts to top highlights, watch-live, trending tours
• Trending matches for quick access to live & upcoming games
• Keyboard opens on launch — zero taps to start searching

Final UI · Search landing

A curated snapshot at the top of every search

I introduced a hybrid section at the top of the results, built from the search query. It elevates the experience by showing a curated mix of videos, matches, tours and player information — a comprehensive snapshot of the content fans are interested in, making discovery faster and more efficient.

Rich results — a curated hybrid block of matches, tours, videos, players and teams, assembled from the query.

Every result type, one tab away

Below the rich snapshot, results break out into clean, scannable tabs — Top Result, Matches, Tours, Players and Videos — so fans can drill into exactly the kind of thing they were after.

Final UI — the results experience across Top Result, Matches, Tours, Players and Videos tabs.

Mapping the full navigation

Search touches the whole app, so I mapped every route in and out — from a query to a match page, a player profile, a video or a tour — to make sure no path was a dead end.

Navigation map — the complete set of routes from search into every end-point in the app.

Hands-free, for the second-screen moment

Fans are often watching one screen and searching on another. Voice search adds a faster, hands-free path — a clear "try saying…" prompt, an obvious listening state, and a smooth hand-off straight into results.

Final UI — the voice-search flow from prompt to listening to results.

Sequencing the work by value vs effort

Not everything could ship at once. I plotted each feature on a user-value × effort matrix to decide what to build first — high-value, low-effort wins (like the populated landing page) led the way, with heavier bets sequenced behind them.

Prioritisation matrix — features mapped on user value against effort to sequence the roadmap.

What this project taught me