help improving vast search interface

A search engine is used by document controllers to search for documents, types of documents, locations that contain documents. The documents are described by vast amounts of meta data and the search interface looks like this:

enter image description here

The tabs at the top either scope the search (tasks, documents) or manage previously run searches (...Manager) The folder system to the left appears to do nothing.

I have been given no research information so have no rationale for any of the decisions that created the interface.

I can simplify this interface by:

  • getting rid of the tabs at the top and creating one unified view
  • tidying up the alignment of fields and labels
  • getting rid of rarely used fields
  • grouping or combining similar fields
  • creating a simple search
  • splitting the right hand frame into two so that results are visible with criteria

But what else could I consider? What about a filter results panel? Am I missing something?

Edit

I would love to do research but no client go-ahead for that

edit 2

here's my solution enter image description here

still waiting to get go ahead for research

problem: if the user chooses different meta data from the filters, the column tables wont make sense. How do I get round this?

Tags: , , , , , ,