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Comment by jaxn | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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