Add search for organization names

[Benbaillou]

Overview:

On the website, when typing an organisation in the search bar, it is neither displayed on the right panel list nor with a pin on the map.

Objectives

Let's allow searches on org names in the search field. Currently, we only allow address input, but many users probably expect to also be able to enter org names or other search terms there (like Google, or their browser's 'address' field).

We want to allow users to directly find details and the position of the organisations they are searching as part as a better UX. It will avoid them scrolling the map or the list randomly.

Actions:

• [x] Design possible solutions with wireframes (PM and UX designers)
• [x] Determinate the feasibility of the solutions (PM + Designers + Eng)
• [ ] How many and what percentage of people search for organization names (and not addresses) - See Bryan's comment
• [ ] What other searches in this address field are people trying? Food products? If so, respond to that expectation.

Ressources:

Bugs https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/91577998/143064541-42bf9bd7-e20a-4999-b141-1bebac5e563f.mov

frames

Current Proposed

[entrotech]

The search field is for defining the geographic location for the search query. It is not intended to search by name or any other property of the listed organizations. This is a common point of confusion, as users are conditioned to a google type search box that attempts to match the search terms to any conceivable part of the pages searched.

In some cases, it can find organizations this way, but it is just a circumstantial situation where the legal address happens to contain the organization name in the MapBox geocoder database.

If we want to implement a google-style search, this would be a large project and require re-thinking the entire front-end application.

[Benbaillou]

Thanks John for the comments. I'll move it to the Icebox for now until we have insights that it needs a "must have"

[entrotech]

To explain a bit more, the location search box is powered by the MapBox geolocation service. When a search string is given to the geolocation service, it queries the MapBox address database for addresses that match the string. We also constrain the search by latitude and longitude bounds, so it also only looks in a rectangular area, which helps restrict results to addresses that are local. The MapBox geolocation service does not have any of the listing data in our Food Oasis database - all it can find is street addresses.

When we started, the idea of the search was to find pantries "near the user", with the user's coordinates based on the browser location service. The location search was added to allow for the cases where:

• The user blocked the browser location service, and/or
• The user wanted to search for pantries in an area different than their current location - e.g., someone conducting a search from home, but wanting to find pantries near their college campus or work, etc.

At first, the map was always centered at the location search address, if specified, then falling back to the browser location (if location is not disabled), then to the default center of the tenant area. When we added the "Search this location" feature, the user could pan the map and center it elsewhere, which is nice, but causes the current ambiguity about distances being addressed in Issue #926

For Admins, we have always had a more comprehensive search capability via the Criteria dialog, and this is not hard to do:

Note that one of the explicit criteria is Organization Name

For Food Seekers, we currently only search by category (meal program, pantry) and geographic location within rectangular latitude and longitude bounds. Our default use case has always been a food seeker that wants to see the pantries and/or meal programs near them.

Requests have been made to add other specific criteria, such as Organization Name, Food Types, Languages spoken, Neighborhood, etc. There is an issue to add "Advanced" search capability to the Food Seeker interface as well, but we have held off on this, out of concern that complicating the User Interface for Food Seekers would alienate casual users. With the current desire to squeeze the UI onto less screen space (e.g., iframes), adding additional search criteria may exacerbate the layout challenges.

I don't know of a way to mix the google-style single-string search with a more structured search like our admin criteria effectively.

[fancyham]

Thanks for the detailed explanation

• Yes, this could possibility be handled in #947 as a filter field (though I think that’d be rather hidden), or maybe an additional search field above the org list which could act as a live filter (that’d be rather unusual)

How about hitting two databases (mapbox for geolocation and FO for org name) and show both results in a drop-down, perhaps stacked to make it ‘easy’. It’s a bit of a hack.

Something like:

Also would be useful to get some analytics data from the current site to identify how often someone currently searches for org names (percentage and absolute numbers?) That would help inform how important this feature is.

• [ ] How many and what percentage of people search for organization names (and not addresses)

[Benbaillou]

@entrotech and @fancyham. Thanks for your details comments, really interesting. I will be working on Google Analytics.

[fancyham]

• Copied from now-closed duplicate issue #1112

Another possible mockup of the search results showing an ideal autocomplete when typing into the ‘search’ field (sounds like this is not possible)

How it is now:

Mockup: (note the first autocomplete items)

[ExperimentsInHonesty]

Recommendation for design to redesign this proposal so that there is a location pin for the address that the user puts in, and that pin is different and larger than the others pins, and it looks like a standard map pin. Food result pins should be brought to the front so that if the address the user provided is a pantry, the standard map pin would appear behind the food pantry pin and larger, so it's clear that your location is highlighted.

[ExperimentsInHonesty]

removed 13pt, changed to 1pt, because 13 was based on technical lift of prior solution. When you make a new issue later (after design) it will have whatever the new assessment for size is from engineering.

[ExperimentsInHonesty]

@Benbaillou I agree with Bryan that we have not demonstrated a need for this feature at this point. https://github.com/hackforla/food-oasis/issues/1115#issuecomment-977273280. Do we keep all the addresses people search for? If we do, ask John for the searches for the last three months, and then compare them against our pantry list

[staceyrebekahscott]

@fancyham You had assigned this issue to yourself about 2 weeks ago, but it is in the Prioritized Backlog column. Is this an issue you are actively working on or would like to be working on?

[fancyham]

This is something that I wanted to flag as a priority and to bring back up with the group— for me, this feature is probably on par with adding ‘advanced search’/filters… maybe a little lower priority (but much more technically difficult)

It’s very common to search for orgs by name that one is familiar with but we don’t currently support it. 

It would require some reworking on the programming side but would be a big improvement for our food seekers. 

Now that we’re revisiting and redoing milestones, you can take me off this and let’s see if or how it could fit in to one of our food-seeker UI milestones?

[jnaito777]

Something to note: right now, the current system allows any input in the search bar such as "cakes," and it proceeds to show the user the default map of LA. But I wonder if we should accommodate for users that want to search for "beans" or "rice" as a food query.