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Comment by jaxn | Hacker News Reader

I am really impressed by AA's response.

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.

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An interface is just a transporter to help you get from where you are to a place where your goal is completed. That's it. There are varying levels of "effectiveness" in transporting you, though, and that's where the quality of the interface comes in.

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... .

You are wrong.

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.

My mockup isn't perfect, and it wasn't intended to be. Your questions and requirements are all valid. Considering the current site acceptable is what bothers me.

I agree that AA.com is a terrible experience, but consider the decision to redesign the site from a business perspective: will making it an order of magnitude more usable increase AA's bottom line by more than some other project they are considering (e.g. opening a new destination)?

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.

GM is run by business people.

I don't think he's arguing that business people don't make mistakes, just that they take a more holistic view of the various options to improve the bottom line, rather than just looking at one extremely narrow slice of a multi-billion-dollar multi-national company.

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.

In GM's case the corresponding thing would not be to redesign their site but to redesign their dealer network, which would actually be a really good idea.

Which brings up an important piece of information that we are missing.

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.

> 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.

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.

When I worked with that 1.8 trillion dollar company, the CTO of the USA group would blackberry me with suggestions after trying our test sites. He definitely used it and would show it to the CEO, then pass feedback directly to the team.

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.

If AA is not in the business of making pretty websites (websites at all, in fact), wouldn't it be more sensible to contract the website out to someone who is in that business? They'll probably be better at it.

I mean, most online retailers contract out their shipping.

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