kikin was a intuitive, contextual search product integrated at OS-level with Android. It allowed users to long-press on any word or phrase on an enabled app and get search instant results.

In the example below long-pressing on "Game" in an article about TV news, would result in kikin contextually detecting that the word was part of name and returning results for the HBO show – disambiguating it from the novel.

Our user's experience with the product would happen after doing a search (long-press) when the results panel, AKA "the kikin drawer", would show up. I worked on constant improvements for the drawer including responsive layouts, icons, and content presentation.

Result-specific content presentation

While Google has certainly perfected how to display specific search results with specifically catered layouts, back when we were working on kikin these were still in their early days. Our product team called the initiative "double down", we would offer result-specific content presentations when we were confident of both the query and the user's potential intent. These were some of the cases that we designed for:

Movies

I love movies, so I thoroughly enjoyed this exploration. My initial research & sketches led me to attempt unified layouts for several entertainment-related use cases. However, I ended up separating movies to better serve users' needs.

Sports

Sports were another type of query that could have very interesting result scenarios. I focused on sports that were in-season and what users searching for them could be interested in. In the case of ongoing or recent games, the results would highlight scores and schedules. We also explored tournament records since there was a World Cup coming up.

The Site

Besides working on the core product, I also worked on the company's site which served the goals of explaining the product for potential partners, and help us recruit. I worked on the visuals and animation for the landing page, and adapting it responsively (and to the visitor's platform).