work / oneplus-scout

OnePlus Scout

Scaled on-device search from one region to 50+ countries, 2x CTR

OnePlusProducts Product Manager, Global Apps · 2020–2022

Led 5 devs, 2 QA, 2 designers, 1 ops

Worked with 1 partner PM, 5 partner devs · marketing, legal, HQ, leadership

Scout search surface

Global search results

Rich result templates

Scaled to 50+ countries

2x * CTR improvement
50+ * Countries reached
4 New content verticals
TL;DR
  • Took Scout from a regional, declining-CTR search feature to a global product in 50+ countries, packaged into the OnePlus Launcher on the Play Store
  • Key decision: bet the CTR recovery on rich result templates (e-commerce, streaming) rather than ranking tweaks, because users choose faster when they can see the content
  • Result: CTR doubled* across the v1 → v1.3 → v2.0 ladder

The real problem

Scout v1 was a regional search feature with limited content coverage, weak multilingual support, and a CTR that was declining, the clearest possible signal that results weren’t worth tapping. The direction for v1.3 came from pairing usage analytics with user interviews: the data said where people abandoned, the interviews said why.

Search result click-through rate
1× 2×

Measured by: usage analytics across the v1 → v2.0 ladder

Goal

Scale Scout to a globally relevant, high-performance search and discovery feature with expanded content types and multilingual support.

Outcome

CTR doubled*. Expanded to 50+ countries. New content categories, faster indexing, and significantly improved user satisfaction.

What was considered

Tune ranking on existing results
Why considered Lowest-effort lever; no UI change
Why it didn't ship Interviews showed the problem was presentation, not order: plain rows gave users nothing to judge results by
shipped Rich result templates (chosen)
Why considered E-commerce and streaming results render as content previews, so users can make the choice visually
Trade-off accepted Each vertical needs its own template spec and partner content pipeline
Global launch in one shot
Why considered Marketing moment; single release train
Why it didn't ship Multilingual indexing and typo/abbreviation tolerance needed proving first; we ran v1.3 closed beta (May 2021) before v2.0 global (Q3 2021)

What was built

v1.3 unified apps and shortcuts for visibility, added result templates for e-commerce and streaming content, sped up load, expanded into contacts and settings, and added typo and abbreviation tolerance. v2.0 took it global inside the OnePlus Launcher on the Play Store, decoupling search improvements from OS release trains.

What I did

Architecture OverhaulRedesigned search indexing and content ranking system
Global LocalisationMultilingual support and region-specific content strategies
Content ExpansionNew verticals: apps, settings, contacts, and web results
PerformanceReduced latency and improved result relevance across queries

* Figures are directional. Reach includes OnePlus and OPPO users globally.