Welcome to the Real World (Of Large Corporations), Dustin...
[Please read no further if comparisons with Apple annoy you :) ]
This is the public face of AA, and it's crap. No one disputes that, and yet it's still the same. Could you imagine Steve Jobs as CEO of AA seeing this site and taking the excuses given? Can you see him taking "We're fixing it over the next 18 months" as an answer?
[Edit: I think I'll market a new bracelet "WWSJD"]
Here is Apple.com a couple of months after Jobs returned: http://web.archive.org/web/19970404064352/http://www.apple.c...
There was an iterative change about 8 months into Jobs' return. http://web.archive.org/web/19971013114837/http://www4.apple....
Then things really started to get better about month 15: http://web.archive.org/web/19980509035420/http://www.apple.c...
EDIT: at the scale of a site like AA.com or any global company?
But it doesn't really matter if the company is big or small, does it? The end result still has to be of some level of quality regardless of the requirements. If something is wrong, there's either a problem on the business side (too many requirements/unfocused goals) or on the design side (bad designers).
lol
Try to look at it from another perspective. Getting lots of quality work done quickly? Yes, horror. But there are lots of things you encounter in these large organizations you simply don't see elsewhere. In terms of requirements, logistical issues, volumes, people, politics, etc. Once you push the envelope of your personal experience by dealing with these things, you become much better at everything, including lots of stuff you do for small companies.
Think of it as practicing basketball with a smaller hoop. I have always oscillated between large and small companies, trying to assimilate the best of both. The battle scars from the horror will probably come in handy later.
If you want your suggestions to be taken seriously, you need to provide them in a way that addresses those problems instead of simply demanding better results.*
* I'm assuming you were writing primarily as a design critic, not as a frustrated consumer -- although I understand that the latter motivated the former.
Why? Because it's too hard? Does the difficulty of organizing that many people and interests cancel out the need for a better user experience? Is the market going to forgive AA because it knows that it's just really hard to get things done at AA?
"The reason I ask is not because I disagree with your demands for higher quality." (emphasis mine)
With respect for your suggestion and with passion for my opinion, it isn't Dustin's job to organize that many people and interests, it's management's job. If they run a company that functions like warring city-states, there's little anybody else can do. If they have united all the teams to work together on a single goal, that's a different story.
Perhaps it is impossible to change the structure of these organizations, but I think there is going to be fundamental disconnect between designers and the organizations they serve until one group at least learns to speak the other's language and address the problems they face.
At the very minimum, it sounds like there is an opportunity to weed out inefficiency (somehow) and find newer, better ways to organize people and their interests.
What is the largest team you have worked on?
I read the letter and your reply. I love the Ira Glass series on taste as well, but do you really want your business analyst to have great taste? I mean, it might not hurt, but I can't imagine making that a job requirement.
AA is not in business to make pretty websites. They are in business to effectively get people from point A to point B. Their website is effective. Your mockup is not as effective for some of the ways I interact with AA.com.
For example, AA's current website is "effective" in the same way it is effective to travel 50 miles from here by walking. But what if you gave me a bike? What about a car?
AA is in the business of giving their customers an enjoyable experience. They just happen to transport them via airplane as their business. Or at least that's how a customer experience designer should look at it, I think.
And stuff like this is just totally unacceptable: http://dustincurtis.com/screenshots/Photoshop-20090522-08344... .
On the front page of AA.com I can log into my frequent flyer account without having to click to go to a login form.
Being able to select a date with the calendar is much more effective when trying to make plans three months out. Parsing unstructured data from text fields is "cool" but increases ambiguity for the majority of users.
What if I want to buy a ticket with points or want to only see flights that have first class available? You're design is going to require me to fill out two forms (or toggle filters at some point).
The AA.com website is not perfect. However, it is effective in ways your mockup is not.
Your position is extremely arrogant and I doubt that you have the experience to back it up.
I don't know the answer to that, but AA is run by business people so I would wager that the answer is "no," otherwise they would be doing it already.
I think there are some intangible benefits to having a more usable website, but those are intrinsically difficult/impossible to measure so they don't factor into the business decisions.
As a designer, I feel your pain, but the unfortunate reality of the situation is that AA is driven by their bottom line and a more usable website probably won't net them the greatest ROI right now.
I would rather have "business people" running GM than someone who thinks that redesigning the GM website will solve all their woes...or any of their woes.
What percentage of AA's bookings come from their website, and what percentages come from travel sites like expedia or from travel agents. I know a large number of AA's customers are business travelers.
If 10% of bookings come from the website and they are able to increase it's effectiveness 50%, that would only result in a 5% increase in sales.
Close, but I think the problem comes from the top. Only management has the power to crush corporate turf wars, which are almost certainly the cause of teams that don't really work together. The only way this would honestly change is if you had a push from the top, and I'm willing to bet the senior management at AA never uses the website. (Why would they?) To them, it's just another division of sales.
If the CEO had to book all his flights himself on the website, you can bet there would be some improvements, because he would force people to fix things. Without that weight from above, teams can get away with not working together. Witness Apple's website. Their senior management (notably that one guy), definitely cares about the look and feel of _every_ aspect of the business, including the website, which I'm sure he looks at personally from time to time.
I can't imagine what would have happend if I'd replied Sorry, no can do your suggestion because group A and group B both need to be appeased as part of this project.
I mean, most online retailers contract out their shipping.
Of course, they have it much easier in that they have a fanatical obsession with simplifying their product and service line rather than complificating it beyond human understanding.
I'm thinking it is not a coïncidence that a company with a usuable self-service web site happens to be a company with simple, easy-to-understand products and pricing.
Hard for me to say anything about AA's management, I am no expert. But looking at their web site, I would rather own the other company's stock.
No matter what business you're in, you're in the business of customer service
I think that having a well designed website would go under that category. And whether Dustin's design is great or not is irrelevant; the fact is that their current website can be vastly improved.