Wikipedia talk:User experience feedback/search box

A straw poll is being conducted here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Usability/Search box poll 2010. --AllyUnion (talk) 02:51, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Comment

As many other users, I hate the position of the new search box. It is non-intuitive for a website whose purpose is search.

After reading about your "usability testing" it is clear that you are focusing on a narrow subset of inexperienced web users rather than the average user, who would expect a search engine to have a search box in the middle or left side of the page.

Google's search is right in the middle and is the focus of the site, as Wikipedia's should be. That would make sense.

Moving the search box to the upper right minimizes the focus on search and relegates it to a minor feature of the website, rather than the main purpose of the site.

For this reason, I have several suggestions to improve the usability of Wikipedia in regards to the search box:

(1) Relocate it back to the left where users expect it to be, and where they like it.

(2) Put TWO search boxes on the page, one on the left where it is natural AND one at the top right where web newbies might look.

(3) Position a LARGE search box in the middle of the main page, about one quarter of the way down the page. On subsequent pages, position the search box on the left and top right, or just the left.

The position of a search box in the top right is based upon the common positioning of the search box on the top right ON WEBSITES WHERE SEARCH IS A MINOR FUNCTION OF THE SITE, not upon sites where search is the purpose of the site, in which case the search should be located in the middle (where it is not needed on subsequent pages) or most reasonably, on the left in the navigation pane.

It seems to me that the usability team lost focus of the purpose of the site. THE SECOND ROUND OF USABILITY TESTING WAS MADE WITH *EIGHT* PARTICIPANTS, which is hardly a representative sample of users.

Remember, for every user that speaks out, there are several thousand other frustrated users that are dissatisfied but don't take the time to send feedback. Based upon the tremendous negative feedback Wikipedia has received for the search box location, I'd hope that Wikipedia would get clued in and fix the problem post-haste.