[Concept] Universal Search for Windows Phone 8.1 +Cortana teaser

[Isyraf Eiman]

First off, welcome to yet another concept of mine, this time for Cortana and Universal Search on Windows Phone. Please note that English is not my first language so I apologize for any errors in grammar.

[Note] This is my original concept. I did not steal this from a thread in the Microsoft Tribe (one of the The Verge forums) as that thread is rightfully mine.
[Update] This concept only contains the Search concept. The Cortana concept I will put in a separate thread.

Okay, enough with introductions, let's start.

Universal Search



This is the Universal Search. You can access this by pressing the Search button. When you do, a search bar will appear up top and the options (action bar) will appear at the bottom.

The current page will be overlaid by translucency so it's less jarring in occasions like accidentally pressing the Search button compared to the current search solution where it takes you to a completely new screen.

Swiping on the search bar to the right or pressing the arrow button will cycle through search modes, the next one being Bing Smart Search. (we'll get onto that later)



With Universal Search, you can search for apps, settings, contacts, memos, music and much much more. You can also use your voice to search by pressing the microphone icon in the actions bar and use Bing Vision to scan QR Codes and Tags.

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Bing Smart Search



This is a short one, Bing Smart Search for Windows Phone is meant to be similar to it on Windows 8.1. Searching things like famous people, corporations, brands, famous events etc will bring up a specialized info tile topmost.

The info tile shows basic information at first so it doesn't interrupt other web results. To view more detailed information, just tap "view more" located below the info tile. To hide the extra information, tap "view less" located at the same place (below the first tile)

Extra information are presented as separate tiles which you can also expand by tapping "view more". The info tiles show information collected from the web in a simple tile based design. Like on Windows 8.1, you can also play songs via Xbox Music and read more about the thing you search via Wikipedia.



Cortana will also make use of Bing Smart Search results. With Cortana, you can save the information into its memory so next time it doesn't require internet connection to display the information.

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Contextual Search



Contextual Search is accessed by pressing the Search button in a search-compatible app which in this case is, Facebook. If it isn't compatible, pressing the Search button just brings out the Universal Search.

The top says "Facebook Search" depending on the app searched in. Beside that is Universal Search and even further beside (not seen here) is Bing Smart Search. This way you can swipe between search modes to get more satisfying results.



Contextual Searching in the Facebook app (especially) has an advantage because Facebook has its own searching system (Facebook Graph Search) which can search for specific things using keywords. For example, "My friends who like Led Zeppelin" or "Photos of Doraemon that are taken at Japan". I think app developers should implement their own simple search system so this feature can be taken advantage of.

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CORTANA TEASER



That's it guys. Feel free to state your opinions in the comments, I would LOVE to hear them. I'll try my best to accept negative criticism.

PS. It would be a dream come true if this gets featured in the front page of WPCentral ;D Thank you for reading.

 

[hopmedic]

Looks pretty interesting. Looks like you've put a lot of time and thought into this. Hopefully Microsoft will do the same - it was kind of a drag to lose the contextual search of WP7 when Mango came out. :wink:

 

[Ashish Saraf1]

Very well made concept...!!

sent either from my Nokia Lumia 820 or HTC Desire HD

 

[Isyraf Eiman]

Thanks I actually did take abt a month to plan all this and Cortana that I'm almost done with.

I agree it's a shame they removed it but it also happened to Windows 8.1 when the Search charm can no longer be used to search contextually and we had to use in-app search boxes :/
They said it was 'too confusing' for some users.

damn people.

 

[manicottiK]

My guess is that MS will create "search contracts" for WP apps like they have for Windows 8.1. In that case, your app tab can be dropped because it could become the first set of matches in the universal search.

One problem with this is that you have nested pivot controls and that's not allowed by the WP UI rules. If a user was looking at the Bing web search results, the user needs to know that horizontal swipes switch amongst result pages (web, local, etc.) and that swipes at the top of the screen switch amongst search providers. Worse yet, if the user is on the app tab, a horizontal swipe near the bottom of the screen will act like a swipe at the top because there's no tab to capture the gesture at the bottom. (This is the same reason why certain controls like toggle switches and sliders are not to be used in pivots or panoramas.)

 

[Moiz Mian]

I feel like Universal Search and Smart Search should be combined into one like it is on windows 8. It should just be one smart search that searches everywhere, but other than that, I like the design/concept! Good job!

 

[jorgemariom]

I really need the universal search

Sent from my RM-824_nam_att_101 using Tapatalk

 

[Isyraf Eiman]

Reply to Moiz Mian :

Yeah, I too think it would be a no brainer to combine the two but now that I think of it,
the Universal Search here is supposed to be similar to Windows 8.1’s Universal Search which searches through files, system settings, apps, memos etc.

Having Bing Smart Search as a separate search mode as the Universal one makes it easy to access whenever you want to web search and it also embraces Windows Phone’s “Pivot” UI.
It’s no different on Windows 8.1 where you type your search, universal results come up and if you want to do a web search with the same search term just click one of the web search suggestions under the universal results.

 

[osoalex]

OMG this is great <3

I think Bing Smart Search and Universal Search should be unified, though, as they are in Windows 8.1.

I loved the Contextual Search, something like that would make the Search button WAY more useful.

Really well done!

 

[sahib lopez]

this is one concept that i actually like unlike the others that want to change the whole windows ui and what not. so good job i hope msft does something like this because i can see myself using this

 

[snowmutt]

Very well thought out.

Apply at MS. Please.

 

[Sebastianx]

Great idea would you mind to post it here?
https://windowsphone.uservoice.com/‎
So that people at microsoft will have a look on your great idea.

 

[Isyraf Eiman]

Great idea would you mind to post it here?
https://windowsphone.uservoice.com/‎
So that people at microsoft will have a look on your great idea.

Thanks, I just posted it there and I will be very grateful if you vote for it.

 

[12Danny123]

nice man. love your concept! now we just need someone to do the Google now like side of Cortana