Dear American Airlines...

http://dustincurtis.com/dear_american_airlines.html

by kyro • 17 years ago

136 84 17 years ago

dustincurtis.com

swombat• 17 years ago

But that's not all. You are breaking the law.

As a publicly traded corporation, it is your duty to realize the maximum shareholder value possible.

Yeah, somehow I don't think that counts as "breaking the law".

dcurtis8• 17 years ago

I have since removed this section. Thanks.

dangrossman• 17 years ago

Usually when someone says "breaking the law", they're referring to a crime, so you're correct.

A board which fails to act in a way which maximizes shareholder value, when that is the stated goal of the corporation (as it often is), is in breach of its fiduciary duties, which is a civil offense.

tallanvor• 17 years ago

So somehow he thinks that because he had problems using their site - a website many people manage to navigate each day - they should treat it as a "pandemic emergency" and change many aspects of their business because of it?

Don't get me wrong, their site could be much better, but Curtis doesn't seem to have much sense of how things work in that place we like to call the "real world".

reitzensteinm3• 17 years ago

Hey, that article had pretty bad usability itself. I skimmed, was unable to find the point through the hyperbole quickly and closed the tab.

EDIT: just to be clear, the article's been updated and this no longer applies.

kyro5• 17 years ago

Actually, if you would've suppressed your desire to quickly jump back here and make a snarky remark, you would've found that the redesign he offered is worlds better, both from an aesthetic and usability standpoint.

You'd think a company, especially in the airline market and one whose profits probably rely significantly on online ticket sales, would make it a priority to invest time and money, a trivial amount really to them, into making sure the online experience is as best as it can be.

reitzensteinm3• 17 years ago

The redesign is much better, but I don't appologize for the snarky remark. Starting out with 5 paragraphs of a hyperbolic and fluffy rant when you're criticising another company for having a cluttered site is insane. What ever happened to bottom line up front?

Dustin did a great redesign, then wrote the article seemingly based on the premise that he had built in credibility. What else explains the wall of self indulgent text, basically celebrating his victory over the AA designers before it's even been established? If I know who he is and I stopped reading, who in American Airlines is going to get to the bottom?

I don't know, maybe I overreacted, but I did tell the truth about closing the tab. I didn't make it to the redesign the first time I looked at the page, and the snarky remark wasn't to get points, it was more made out of disgust. If you look through my comment history, you'll probably see this is rare for me.

dcurtis8• 17 years ago

Hey thanks for pointing this out. I added a sentence at the top to clarify the article and toned down the hyperbole.

reitzensteinm3• 17 years ago

Much better, thanks!

Tichy2• 17 years ago

"Hello, you are stupid and I hate you, therefore you should let me consult for you"

I'd be surprised if this works. Typically being nice to potential customers should be a more promising approach.

wmeredith• 17 years ago

I seriously doubt he wants to consult for them. This is good PR for him. He's written off American Airlines as a client potential client and a past customer.

mseebach2• 17 years ago

He comes across as arrogant and full of himself. The redesign is nice, but not ground-breaking brilliant, and I can already hear him shrug and say, "well, that's stupid" when he's told that a certain change has to be made for a certain reason.

Tichy2• 17 years ago

Good point, I didn't think of that.

amr• 17 years ago

I don't think he intended to land them as clients. This is more to showcase his skills and gain publicity. A page from 37 signals playbook. I think he has few good points about the user experience. However, the hyperbole turned me off.

mtpark• 17 years ago

I agree with you, but ironically the post reads like he's trying to land them as clients.

nsimpson• 17 years ago

One of the hardest things to do when hiring a consultant is to figure out what they're like to work with ... will they have a good attitude, work well with people, understand and listen to requirements etc. Surprisingly to some, many companies value this kind of thing very highly.

jrockway2• 17 years ago

Disclaimer: AA is one of my favorite companies to deal with, so perhaps I am being too nice to them.

FWIW, I think this is BS. AA's website is not wonderful, but it's not hard to use. I book about 50,000 miles worth of travel a year there, and each trip only takes me a few minutes. My only complaint is that it won't remember my password.

He also complains about the business model, with "ruby, sapphire, and emerald" and "economy, business, and first" classes. This is how the legacy carriers work. They have three-class longhaul flights, and yes, you have to pick which class of service you want. They are also a member of an airline alliance, complicating things a bit ("ruby, sapphire, and emerald" are not AA's elite status, but rather the elite statuses that are recognized by oneworld, the alliance they're in). (He neglects to mention AA's own elite levels, which is odd -- the only place that you see notes about status is during seat selection, and they use AA's terms for the status [Gold, Plat, Exec Plat], not the oneworld terms.)

This complexity is why I fly AA nearly exclusively. Since I fly them a lot, I get various privileges (free domestic upgrades, lounge access when travelling internationally, all the BS fees waived, etc.). The complexity that being a member of an airline alliance entails means that I get to earn miles (and status) by flying BA in Europe, JAL to Japan, etc. When I have enough miles, I can redeem them for something worthwhile, like a $14,000 first-class ticket. (On the "less-complex" carriers, the best thing you can get with "miles" is a domestic economy ticket. "Yay.")

Anyway, I don't think this guy knows much about flying. Perhaps AA's website could better educate him... but most of these things have nothing to do with the webiste. If you don't care about the specific benefits of flying AA, just use a fare comparison site and pick the lowest fare. If you do care about AA's benefits, read the documentation on their site. Either way, I don't think the website or the legacy-carrier business model is harming the shareholders.

kyro5• 17 years ago

Maybe it's just a matter of time before the Apple of the airline industry makes its rise? Or maybe one exists already.

jakewolf• 17 years ago

They're called VirginAmerica.com

dcurtis8• 17 years ago

Sure, maybe you enjoy navigating their odd hierarchy of complex member statuses. I'm pretty sure most people don't enjoy that. At the end of the day, American Airlines loses 300 million dollars a quarter. They're doing something wrong. And they have to fix it. They could start with fixing their customer experience.

zcrar70• 17 years ago

They're doing something wrong. And they have to fix it. They could start with fixing their customer experience.

They're definitely doing something wrong, and they definitely need to fix it.

I like your redesign, but I doubt that their existing design is what's losing them 1.2 billion a year.

Treat this as a pandemic emergency across your entire company / Immediately fire your entire web team, if you have one / [Booking a flight on your website] disturbed me so deeply that I vowed never to fly your airline again

This comes across as hysterical and out of proportion with the problem at hand. This detracts from your main points, and makes it more difficult for you to be taken seriously.

jrockway2• 17 years ago

As a customer, figuring out how to make AA profitable is not really my job. I love the service they provide to me, though, whereas I would only fly the "low cost carriers" under extreme duress. Maybe that's the problem, but probably not.

edw519• 17 years ago

Not my experience.

Example:

Ft. Lauderdale to Pittsburgh on Southwest: $150 round trip, full credit for cancellations, no Saturday night stayover required, can book only one way trips, no change fees, no luggage charge, can pick my own seat, earn 4 free trips per year, drink for free

Miami to Pittsburgh on AA: $550 to $800. That's all I need to know.

Full time Southwest flyer here. If one airline has it figured out, why don't others?

mrduncan2• 17 years ago

I couldn't agree more, they are one of the only airlines which understand that simplicity can actually be an advantage.

They fly only a single aircraft type (737), only have general seating (no first class), don't have in-flight entertainment, and the list goes on. They focus on simply getting you from point A to point B in a cheap and efficient manner.

While I'll concede that they're not always the best, they are nearly always better than most.

jaxn• 17 years ago

The difference is people who fly ALOT.

In 2008 I flew 150 segments on AA (a flight with a layover is two segments). I fly Southwest sometimes, but I would never consider it for frequent travel.

On AA, they recognize that life is hard for people who fly very frequently. First class upgrades after a long week make a big difference. Being able to show up late to the gate and still get my preferred seat makes a big difference.

Southwest is great for casual travelers. While AA costs more it is 100% worth if for someone who travels every week.

As for the website as an indication of overall customer service, I have to disagree. I can call in and they know who I am and what flights I have booked from the caller id. When a travel day is going less than smooth, being able to call someone directly and get it resolved is great.

Elepsis• 17 years ago

I totally agree with you on the benefits, but you must admit that from a sheer ugliness perspective AA has by far the worst site out of the "old school" carriers. Delta (my usual airline of choice), United, USAirways, and even Continental have much nicer sites (roughly in my order of preference). The usability of all of the above seems to not be all that different, however, so to each his own.

yef4• 17 years ago

Delete the snotty letter, it's not your main point. Also, remove the use of their logo and trademarks or they're just going to have their lawyers send you a letter telling you to take your page down. Use placeholders of the same size.

Focus on the before and after redesign with visual callouts of what wasn't working and how you fixed it.

Be professional.

thorax3• 17 years ago

Any response from AA.com may be his point and would serve well in drawing more attention to his rant/redesign.

I agree that I'd like to see less rudeness overall, but I suspect that's the marketing gimmick here to gain attention.

yef4• 17 years ago

I am frequently in the market for web design services, but I would never hire an opinionated snot regardless of his talent. Be professional and save rants for beers with friends.

Quarrelsome• 17 years ago

Not sure about firing the entire dev team. You don't even know what the back office is like. Who would maintain the existing system or handle the change over?

Just get some people to work on the design and work with the existing dev team and sack the current design team.

dcurtis8• 17 years ago

You're right. I meant design team. I changed it from "web" to "design."

antidaily• 17 years ago

Ever worked for a company of that size? I'm willing to bet their designers are as frustrated as you.

Grodzman• 17 years ago

I couldn't care for some of the copy. It seems like you wrote it right after your horrible experience, so being a little dramatic is normal, but go through it again and tone it down (now that you're a bit less frustrated).

With that out of the way, I think the redesign is wonderful, it really makes the experience much less painful. Sure, some of the legacy classes of travelers are an annoyance, and I'm sure if American Airlines had to do it again, they wouldn't create so many sub-classes. Like dealing with real clients, you simply have to accept some legacy standards and work around them (maybe explain to me clearly the difference between classes).

Overall, it looks like you did a lot of work and I love the end result, could you maybe post a little before/after with some details on what you decided to cross out or move around?

Your friendly blogger, Vlad (vladg.com)

raganwald2• 17 years ago

I'm okay with the tone. One of my treasures is a book called "Ogilvy on Advertising" by David Ogilvy. In it, he impales, flays, dices, and torches campaigns and advertisements for various companies. His tone is less confrontational than Dustin's, but given the age of the book, I think it's at least as confrontational relative to the cultural standards of its time.

The book is now a classic, and Ogilvy built his eponymous firm into a powerhouse on the back of his reputation for telling anyone and everyone who would listen how terrible most advertising is, and how incompetent both clients and agencies are.

And what kind of stuff did David Ogilvy advocate? Simplicity. He ranted and raved about advertising that failed to pic a simple benefit and hammer it home, advertising that failed to motivate the reader to act. I see Dustin's rant in the same light, telling AA to get to the point and make it easy to fly with them.

Dustin may or may not follow in Ogilvy's footsteps, but this kind of thing certainly has precedent.

alexk• 17 years ago

Yes! Forget the tone and focus on the quality of the customers feedback AA get from this site, any company can only imagine the feedback like this, and AA gets it right now and for free.

raganwald2• 17 years ago

Well, AA is unlikely to read it and fire their team based on Dustin's say-so :-)

But from time to time companies wake up and smell the coffee all on their own. AA may get fed up with their marketing team and "clean house" themselves, hiring a new manager and looking for new outside talent like contractors and consultants.

When that happens, the new team are often looking for people who think just like them--that the old stuff was garbage and the old management inept. Dustin could get a call under such circumstances.

llimllib• 17 years ago

The ironic thing to me is that they spend a bajillion dollars every few years redesigning their stewardess' outfits and making sure they get tons of pub for it, but the web site gets nowhere near the same amount of attention.

anigbrowl• 17 years ago

The majority of people are much, much more interested in clothes than websites. Do you think fashionistas and clothing obsessives are a bunch of pretentious wankers? Well, that's how the general public feels about online designers. Very few people think, or care, about user interfaces, but everyone has the experience of wearing clothes, so such information seems vastly more relevant.

sammyo• 17 years ago

I use the AA site fairly often and am far from in love with it but I don't care at all for the re-design. AA for me is work, sometimes painful work if I need a booking for a bad family issue. A pretty island that I'll never get to visit will often annoy. I want all the functionality immediately at hand, lots of dense information is useful. They have, over the years, improved the date handling so it's usually two clicks. Clicking through a few pages of options gets to the information needed, it's often a long list of possible flights, but I'd really be unhappy if it was filtered and niced up so I missed an option. Now his design for AAHappyBubbleVaca.com would be just right.... (oh, sorry for the snark)

mcargian• 17 years ago

Nice rant, good PR for yourself. I guess it would be easy for anyone to redesign this site if they threw all business and technical requirements out the window as you have.

What are you supposed to do for one way trips? What if I am booking a multi-city flight? What if its an award ticket with miles? What if I want to check first class flights only? Flights with fully refundable fares? How do I check fares for children? What if I want non-stops only? Have you tested your "when" box with users? I can guarantee some of my less technical friends and family members would have no idea what to put in that box.

If you want a simple tool, fly an airline that has simple routes. All of you who love Southwest, go fly them. No one is forcing you to fly American. If you don't think they are providing shareholder value, don't buy their shares.

Anyway, like I said, nice PR. You suckered me in.

dcurtis8• 17 years ago

You're right. Lots of research and testing would need to be done. This is just a seed. I did think about a lot of this stuff, though.

For one-way flights, you just put one date in, rather than a range. As you pointed out, this has some problems. I'm willing to live with them for this mockup, though.

For multi-stop flights, you click the plus button next to the destination. Users who are not looking for multi-stop flights would not be looking for a way to add a destination, but the plus sign is just forward enough that if you are, you would press it and find your answer.

For the more advanced filtering stuff, I think it would be best to add those controls to the flights listing on the next page rather than clutter up the front page and first impression a user gets. Simplicity with progressive disclosure.

JoelSutherland• 17 years ago

This is a great PR strategy that was used in the early days of 37 Signals. It was called 37Better and it put them on the map when they were still a consultancy:

http://www.37signals.com/better.php

imajes4• 17 years ago

Dear Dustin Curtis...

I looked at your rant at american for their poor usability and it was so overflowing with hyperbole that I had to close the tab. You suggested that by changing out american's design team, they might stop-gap their loss and regain a new glory in the airline industry.

But you forgot to do one thing first: research.

If you had remembered to check out the brand core values you'd know that american is really all about a killer rewards program. The majority of customers seem to be repeats, all holding aadvantage member cards and willing to plug away at that free flight to Cabo they've just been dreaming about.

Your design however doesn't address this need; not one single link, box or other clever device on the page gets you into your account; the place where the airline can customize your travel, offer you deals on the routes you fly regularly and so on.

See, American isn't Southwest, VA or JetBlue - they know that their business is based around repeat customers who all know how to work the system.

Yeah, it's a horrible looking site and yours definitely pops more. But hey, you say it'll help save their losses: i think it'll make them worse.

Yours, an American customer

(BTW: if you were serious about envisaging a redesign of american and not just taking a promo pot shot - then checkout the discussions on flyertalk.com - you'll find people who travel american every day there.)

83457• 17 years ago

"not one single link, box or other clever device on the page gets you into your account"

I could be wrong but I would probably be tempted to click on "Your account" to get to my account.

mikeryan• 17 years ago

Added later? It seems Dustin is monitoring this thread.

kyro5• 17 years ago

"they know that their business is based around repeat customers who all know how to work the system."

Hmm, so they're intentionally crappifying their experience to make their existing customers feel 007-esque? To make them feel that they're somehow hacking into the site, digging deep, to find good deals? Why not just lay the good deals out on the table? What's there to hide? If they really are good deals, wouldn't it seem logical for them to make 'working the system' a relative breeze for anyone looking to score a free trip? And you can't possibly believe that this type of attitude is going to lead AA to a long and prosperous future. It's about an experience. You start with a great online experience, then that seamlessly integrates with your in-airport experience, and that leads to new customers. And I'm willing to bet that any business on the planet that provides an easy and quick service to their customers will have a higher rate of repeat customer use than a business that caters to a customer base by providing a stupidly complex experience, ultimately capping their customer acquisition rate.

Look at Apple. You want to see a Genius at the Genius Bar? Go online, make an appointment in less than 1 minute, go to the store, and see your name up on the screen with a Genius ready to help you. You see how that works? My computer illiterate parents could book a Genius Bar appointment. Why shouldn't they be able to do the same with AA?

imajes4• 17 years ago

Good points- working the system here means that they are able to know what the offers are and so on - not just be able to drive the site but know when to talk to someone, etc.

I agree that user experience is fundamental, it's just the hyperbole of Dustin that made me cringe :)

markessien• 17 years ago

I like your redesign, it's very effective. But you're making a mistake in your text - you're combining a personal approach with 'angry' text. By doing so, you're creating an atmosphere you don't want, because people are observing a personal fight between two people. I.e, you personify the airline, then also use a personal tone, so people observe a fight, and the reactions to that will always be negative.

Follow the rule: When you go personal, make it positive. When you need to go negative, then go impersonal, allowing people to focus on the arguments you are bringing.

dcurtis8• 17 years ago

I agree with you. But after my experience with American Airlines, I felt personally insulted. This particular fight is personal.

absconditus• 17 years ago

A much better example of how this is done:

http://www.37signals.com/better/fedex/

I suggest explaining your changes instead of aimlessly bitching.

kyro5• 17 years ago

You need explanations as to which one is better? Really?

'Cuz all I need is a 5yr. old and a 55yr. old to point to which one they think is easier to use.

teej• 17 years ago

Justifying your design decisions shows that you have good communication skills and that your design was thought through, not just mindlessly designed to be "prettier".

yef4• 17 years ago

How many 5yr. olds do you know that book flights online?

boundlessdreamz2• 17 years ago

Yes, you need to explain why things are designed the way they are.

There are whole disciplines around it called "Human Computer Interaction" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-computer_interaction and "Information Design" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Design

imownbey• 17 years ago

For someone who is angry about the UI of the AA site, the UI of your own site could use some work. I can not click on any of the pictures, and instead I am forced to click a giant "See the redesign" button. I also can not click on your logo to get back to your homepage, even if I wanted to hire you I have no idea how to get to a page that will tell me how.

dcurtis8• 17 years ago

You're right. It's pretty ironic. But it's my personal site, and I have treated it more as a playground than anything serious. I felt that I was allowed to neglect it.

However, in light of the attention I have received today, I'll be spending a lot more time perfecting it in the future.

DTrejo• 17 years ago

I'd love to be able to see a full size of that black and white screenshot of the original for comparison.

ngrandy• 17 years ago

yes. a lot of airline and travel websites have awful, inexcusable user interfaces, and they could use a good kick in the pants. similar frustrations inspired us to build tripeedo.com, a better user experience for travel search.

Alterlife• 17 years ago

Note that AA has slightly different interfaces for countries other than the US:

this website is for India: http://www.americanairlines.in/aa/intl/in/index.jsp

Here's the country selection page: http://www.aa.com/aa/international/internationalSplashAccess...

ojbyrne• 17 years ago

As someone who works in the travel industry, it sometimes feels like basically everyone stopped working on their websites around 2001. The investment was so massive that there's a huge uphill battle to make any changes at all since then.

sireat• 17 years ago

Slightly offtopic, but for an example of truly ugly design see http://www.ryanair.com/site/EN/

As Dolly Parton said, you have to spend a lot to look that cheap...

Dear American Airlines...

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