Updating Autocomplete
September 20, 2014
I'm David, a new developer at DocSpot, and I'll be working on all-things user-facing. You can split DocSpot's work into two main categories: 1) finding, storing, and organizing information about doctors; and 2) making the information available and useable to people who visit our site. Part two is where I'll be working. I'm excited to roll-out my first project, which is an updated and improved autocomplete feature (the feature that fills in the suggestions when you type an incomplete word in the search bar).
Autocomplete or autosuggest features are nothing new (though I remember it was exciting when Google did it in 2008). DocSpot has had an autocompleting search bar for some time. What I did was change around some code to make it faster, more flexible, and more powerful. For example, the previous version of autocomplete could not suggest doctors' names or names of insurance providers - now those are possible. Autocomplete is a work-in-progress. With a strong foundation, I hope to continue tweaking it and improving it during my time at DocSpot as I take on other development projects.
We like our site, but some features are getting outdated, slow, or need to be improved to keep pace with changing technology. Like autocomplete: we had something but we wanted to make it better for the user. I'm looking forward to making similar improvements in other areas of the site. We can always use input from users so let us know what you think!