Improve searchability of icons

What is the challenge?

The library of basic icons is great. However the search bar for icons in Whiteboards and Document titles only responds to three letters. The names of icons is counter-intuitive and usually does not reflect any common icon naming convention. As a result, icons are not actually searchable by keyword.

This means one has to scroll down through hundreds of icons to find the icons one is looking for. The long list is not structured in any way, apart from icon style/creator. This means I can usually find an icon if I'm not actually looking for it.

The difficulty is searching for icons is compounded by the slowness of the search due to the presence of more advanced icons (AWS, Azure, etc.). These are much welcome. However, this means one has to wait several seconds to get a confirmation that the keyword search for icons does not actually work.

What is the impact?

It can take a lot of time to find suitable icons.

As a UX researcher, I have to process vast amounts of information from disparate sources. Icons in whiteboards provide a valuable visual overview and categorisation of what is otherwise large amounts of text and conceptual information.

Describe your idea

Make it easier to search icons by: 1) keyword beyond three letters; and 2) common semantic association.

E.g. 📢 should be searchable by the keywords: 'loudspeaker' 'bullhorn' 'megaphone' 'loud hailer' 'public address system' etc. Different icon and emoji libraries often tag icons with different names, so searchability would be improved by linking these.