Is it good to put search box above the keyboard?

Question

Here's the case, I'm designing for a text editor on iphone, user wants to search keyword in the article the just wrote. We don't have the suggest results (things pop out when you're searching in yelp), we don't need to jump to a new page to show realtime results. All we need is that when a search session is made, user could jump between search results(buttons for previous and next).

Right now I'm thinking put the search bar next to the keyboard, is it a good idea? Are there any conventions that should be considered?

Thanks for your help and feedbacks.

Answer 1

I'm no iOS-Expert but when you press Ctrl + F inside of Mozilla Firefox the Search is at the very Bottom, only searching the current page, while the global search such as google.com is at the very top.

User Clint did a good Job with pointing out that there is a guideline for iOS Search boxes.

Most times the upper part is something that has a higher order. For example inside of a newspaper the title always is over the article. The title draws an invisible box around the article while the browser top bar also draws an border around the part with lower order - the website content

I think a search bar at the bottom more looks like a tool that only searches the current page while a top search looks like something that sesrches on the whole website or the whole database.

I hope i was able to help :)

Answer 2

I'd suggest not have the search bar next to the keyboard for the following reasons:

1. It starts to resemble the iOS text messaging interface which may cause confusion with some users
2. Are you expecting users to need to search for keywords that often that it needs a persistent search bar?

I'd recommend having a read of the iOS Human Interface Guidelines, particularly the following link on iOS Elements (Search Bar) - https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/MobileHIG/Bars.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40006556-CH12-SW5

I would recommend (if you don't need a persistent search bar visible) including a search button in the Toolbar and then following the iOS convention of having the Search Bar with the Toolbar at the top of the screen. If the Search Bar needs to be persistent, I'd still recommend following the iOS convention and keeping it with the Toolbar at the top of the screen.

Answer 3

Since you are asking about the position of the search box in question I would suggest moving it to the top of the screen. It seems that this location has become the default. You can see this in for example the default email app in Android, while the button for searching your emails in the buttom, the input itself goes to the top.

While your application has a different way of displaying the results of the search, your users might get confused by because of the different way it works compared to what they are used to. It is largely known that changing the behaviour and expaections of people is very hard.

You can look at some great examples of good search design here.