Search, filters, facets, category browsing, query correction, and no-results recovery.
Browse all problem familiesDiscovery supports several starting points: a known term, a broad category, a partial memory, or a set of constraints. The interface helps people refine their understanding while they search.
Strong: A visitor searches for a quiet study room, filters by capacity and time, and sees available rooms with location and booking rules.
Weak: A visitor searches for quiet space, receives mixed events and rooms, then repeats the query because the result scope stays hidden.
Try it: Try three different descriptions of the same goal and record the route each description opens.
Begin with the core behavior, apply it in different contexts, then review cases that reveal the quality boundary. Open each entry for its decision rule, states, example, and source trail.
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Start this family →Learn the shared task and the core interaction choices.
Users are exploring a broad catalog, service directory, help center, learning library, product collection, or content repository.
Users know a word, name, or identifier.
The system can predict likely queries.
Users need to narrow the current search results, browse results, table, card grid, or list by multiple criteria.
Search, browse, or filter controls can produce an empty result set.
Users need to compare or act on a result set in different orders.
Choose a specialized form for the context and follow its complete behavior.
A few common filters should stay visible and directly toggleable near the content.
The data set has structured attributes users understand.
The same query can search different repositories, sites, workspaces, spaces, channels, result types, teams, or organization-wide indexes.
Users submit free-form searches where spelling and typing mistakes commonly block useful results.
Results contain enough text that users need to scan for where the query matched.
Users search large datasets and benefit from seeing result hits before full submit.
Expert or repeat users need precise retrieval across fields, operators, phrases, dates, ranges, exclusions, functions, or prior search history.
Users repeat the same search criteria across sessions or operational cycles.
Users repeatedly need the same filter criteria on a list, table, board, queue, base view, or dashboard.
Search activity persists beyond the current session and users need to inspect or control it.
Users revisit a search surface and benefit from rerunning recent query wording.
Users need discovery help in a large item, product, content, service, or action space.
Study failure cases and identify the better recovery route.
Use this anti-pattern to review feeds, search results, product grids, media streams, activity streams, catalogs, and generated infinite-scroll pages.
Use it when a reset label is narrower than the actual state it clears.
Try fewer words, clear the filter, or search across all pattern families.
Search all patterns