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Forum Discussion
1P_Blake
Community Manager
Community ManagerWe're the team behind 1Password’s latest product enhancements. Ask us anything! (Wednesday, February 12th)
Hey everyone! đź‘‹
We're the team behind 1Password’s latest product enhancements. Ask us anything!
We’ll be hosting an AMA right here on February 12th at 9AM PT / 12AM ET with 1P_MattG - 1Pas...
What is the design/thought process behind reverting to the old mobile search bar location?
I guess I'm a bit confused as to why it was changed to appease knee-jerk complaints from three years ago? The blog says this is to "make it easier to search quickly" (blatantly false) and to "align with other devices, creating a consistent experience."
I guess the clarification I'm looking for here is how 1Password are justifying this as a good design choice now with the market and modern design going the other direction. Look at any app with AI, Arc Browser, Arc Search, Raycast, iOS spotlight, etc.. Modern ui/ux design is moving to search being the main way to interact as it's faster and easier for everyone. Three years ago, with the release of 1Password 8, the search moving to an easily reachable tab was a great design/ux choice. The same can't be true of the regression now.
The search bar at top is a much smaller target to tap on and it's just harder to reach, especially with the oversized phones that seem to be getting larger each year. Also, now with there being a search bar on each tab, the experience gets only more confusing. For example, if I search for something in one tab, open it and navigate somewhere else, I need to remember what tab I had the search on. If I forget what tab I was on, it's possible to search and open the same item on a new tab. This is possible with all three tabs on mobile now, meaning if that happens, I can easily reach a state of the app where I'm trying to swap between 2 or more tabs and it looks as if nothing is happening and the app is broken.
That doesn't sound like it's "easier to search quickly" to me. Having a dedicated place and button that is always 1 reachable tap away sounds like a better experience to me. It seems to me as if 1Password has some ux/ui designers or managers with differing preferences now. That whoever is making these decisions now, maybe uses Android. Android seems to have missed the boat on making things reachable and accessible on a big screen, instead forcing the user to treat their phone as a tablet. Meanwhile modern design continues to move more towards the bottom tab bar being the focus and even beyond mobile, search is now being treated as a first class citizen everywhere other than 1Password. I had even mentioned how important the search tab was in some of your surveys, saying how all of the other tabs are mostly irrelevant and how search is the only thing I use, to no avail it appears. I've even asked friends and family that I've recommended 1Password to and they all primarily use the search tab as well.
I'd really appreciate hearing some thoughts behind all of this beyond just "we had complaints three years ago."
1P_MattG
1Password Team
1Password TeamThat’s a good question as well! People are generally uncomfortable with change, so when we switched to the dedicated Search tab, we weren’t surprised that there were some strong feelings about it. We obviously made the change because we thought that, based on our research, user testing, design philosophy, etc., it would be a positive improvement.
We spent months (as you should) addressing feedback and issues reported from the 1Password 7 to 1Password 8 launch, and users generally loved the product. However, even almost two years after the launch, we still saw an overwhelming demand for restoring the previous search experience.
We always try to do the right thing for our users. I think that means it’s also really, really important for us to admit if we got something wrong—and then make it right. While feedback was a big factor in reverting to the universal search experience, we also spent a great deal of time improving the quality of the search algorithm as well. Many of these changes didn’t make sense with a dedicated Search tab, so we wanted to err on the side of discovery and findability.
Mobile also has limited screen real estate, which I am very conscious of. Now that we’ve removed one of the dedicated tabs, that leaves room for something new we’re working on. :)
