This project is a demo of Algolia, using basic features to build a working search interface in a few hours. The demo can be accessed at https://augustofarnese.github.io/algolia-assignment/.
Based on the problem that there are many TED Talks available, from various speakers, and divided into many different topics, it may be hard to find a relevant talk to watch. This demo gives an easy way to explore the talks and find a good one to watch.
Users can type relevant keywords to find a topic they want, and also refine their search by some attributes:
- Tags: There are several tags available for filtering based on the topic covered by each video. They can be selected on the left menu or typed on the search text input.
- Speaker: They can be selected on the left menu or typed on the search text input.
- Characteristics: Each video has a ratting attribute to some characteristics they might have for the viewers. Users can filter by them using a range slider for each of those characteristics:
- Funny
- Beautiful
- Courageous
- Fascinating
- Informative
- Ingenious
- Inspiring
- Jaw-Dropping
Each result hit contains the speaker's name, title, and description of the talk.
As this demo was built just in few hours, it lacks some features that would significantly increase the user experience while searching TED Talks:
- Add direct links for the talks on each search result, so users can click and watch the talk, instead of having to go to YouTube or TED Talks website to find the video;
- Use sorting instead of refinements for attributes like Funny Rating, Beautiful Rating, etc. Although refinements give the ability to filter by more than one attribute, it resulted in a more complex interface, and sorting would be better recognized by users in a search interface;
- Reduce description size and add a "show more" button to display the whole description;
- Each hit thumbnail is too big for a thumbnail, causing loading delays with bad internet connections. There should be smaller images and progressive image loading for a better user experience.
- The documentation is well written and was very helpful to learn Algolia's features;
- The Live Demo link available at InstantSearch.js Docs page isn't working;
- The settings file available for the TED Talks dataset may be outdated and the format couldn't be loaded into the dashboard;
This project was generated with create-instantsearch-app by Algolia. It was used a public dataset of TED Talks, available at https://github.com/algolia/datasets/tree/master/tedtalks.