When an app supports large amounts of information, users expect to be able to quickly locate particular content by searching.
In its most basic form, a search involves:
- Opening a search text field
- Entering and submitting a query
- Displaying a set of search results
However, the search experience can be made significantly more gratifying by including some enhancements:
- Enabling voice search
- Providing historical search suggestions based on recent user queries, even before a query has been started
- Offering auto-completed search suggestions that match actual results in your application data
There are two major patterns for in-app search: persistent search and expandable search.