Zen is Yandex's content platform: authors, articles, videos. It lives on several platforms, but the biggest one is the main screen of the Yandex app, 20M DAU, right below global search. Everything about this project comes from that placement.

Main screen of the Yandex app: global search, weather and mail on top, the Zen feed below
The main screen: ecosystem block on top, Zen feed below

Problem

The main screen is two things stacked together: the ecosystem part, with global search, weather and mail, and the Zen feed. The feed had no way to look anything up. Saw an author yesterday, want to find them again? You couldn't. Authors complained, readers complained.

We ran a UX test to make sure it wasn't just loud feedback: find @username in Zen. Most people scrolled down the feed, looked for a search field inside it, gave up, scrolled back up to global search and typed there.

Why Not Global Search

That was part of the task, and the Search team handled it on the results page. But the SERP is a heavily optimized machine with its own team and its own metrics. You don't experiment with it quickly. The main scenario had to live inside the feed.

Solution

The hard part wasn't adding search. It was adding a second search to an app where search is the whole point. A Search tab at the bottom, a search field inside the feed: both would read as "another search" sitting right next to the real one.

So the Zen header with a search icon appears only once you've scrolled into the feed. The two searches are never on screen together, and search shows up exactly where people looked for it in the test.

The feed scrolled past the ecosystem block: a Zen header with a search icon has appeared on top
Scroll into the feed and the Zen header appears

The icon is a magnifier with a small star sitting in the ring, from Zen's logo. It tells you which search this is before you tap.

The Zen header up close: the search icon is a magnifier with a small star in the ring, next to the Zen logo star
The search icon with the Zen star

Zero State

We had an editorial section called Showcase, and it was losing visitors every day. Instead of a redesign, it became the starting screen of search, together with your subscriptions.

Search zero state: the search field, a row of subscriptions and a Showcase story from Novosibirsk University
Showcase and subscriptions as the starting screen of search

First session: a short hello. After that: your recent searches.

First session: an illustration of a hand with a magnifier and the message Meet the new Zen search
Search zero state on later sessions: recent searches, Writing Routines and Sports.ru, with a Clear button
The first-session hello, then your recent searches

Results

Relevant authors come first, then content of every kind: posts, videos, articles.

Results for v60 recipe: a Channels block with three coffee channels and a More channels button, then the first post
Results continued: a video about brewing V60 coffee, then a post with an article card
Channels first, then posts, videos, articles

My Role

Product lead, design lead and me as senior designer. All the design and interaction work was mine. The project sat between three units, Zen, Search and SERP, each with its own metrics, and part of my job was getting the solution accepted on both the Zen and the Search side.

Result

Zen search was already used a lot: in the Zen app, on mobile web, on desktop. We took that total as the baseline. After launch, search sessions grew by 50% on top of it, from one new entry point.

Showcase got its visitors back, and time spent in the section went up 12%.