TPT’s Educational Marketplace Search Experience

A teacher at a desk using a laptop that shows TPT search results for fractions

Challenge

For busy teachers with limited time, TPT's resource search was getting in the way.

Usability issues made it slow and frustrating to find the right resources.

Senior Product Designer · Research, UX audit and redesign

The original search page with six notes on its filter list: no quick way to clear all selected filters, subcategories displayed inconsistently, no way to exclude over-tagged resources, rarely used filters, inconsistent interaction patterns and Price buried low on the page

Process

To understand where the experience was breaking down, I paired qualitative research on users' goals and pain points with an independent UX audit.

Together they revealed six key issues, from filters that couldn't be cleared at once to Price, the most-used filter, buried low on the page.

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fractionsAll GradesAll Subjects

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Solution

I redesigned the filter panel to resolve each issue the research surfaced.

The redesigned filter panel with five notes: collapsed selected filters with a count and a clear button, collapsed long lists, reordered filters by usage, collapsed less-used filters and added an Expand All Filters button

Baymard Institute's search and filtering research guided several key decisions, including collapsible sections for less-used categories, a unified subcategory structure and global clear-all and expand-all controls.

Outcome

The redesigned filter panel shipped across TPT's search.