Word search methods are usually phonetic, radical, and stroke lookup, and these three methods complement each other to help us solve all the words that we can't write or read.
Since you are asking about radical word search, we will casually take the word "you" as an example and use Xinhua Dictionary as a reference book to present it:
Step 1: Determine the radical, the radical of "you" is the "heart bottom".
Step 2: Find the location of "heart" from the "radical directory" of the dictionary, as shown in the figure, the "radical directory" is on page 15 of the dictionary, hit to page 15, count the strokes of "heart" is 4 strokes, and find "heart" in all radicals of 4 strokes.
Step 3: Find the location of the "heart" part from the "word checklist" of the dictionary, through the second step, we can know that the "heart" part is on page 75 of the "word checklist", so we turn to page 75 and find the base camp of the "heart" part.
Step 4: Determine the position of "you" in the "dictionary text", that is, count the remaining strokes of the word "you" after deducting the "heart" part is 7, and find the word "you" in the 7-8 strokes of the "heart" part.
Step 5: Turn to the main text of the dictionary and find the pronunciation and meaning of the word "you" on page 365 determined in the fourth step.
This is true for all other words, or in the dictionary.