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The new VirginAmerica.com

static.virginamerica.com

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Re: The new VirginAmerica.com

#91

Post by alister »

robertnealan wrote: post #87

From a design perspective this is one of the most beautiful airline booking designs I've ever seen, but from a usability perspective it might just be the worst (save for maybe RyanAir). The cities being laid out in a grid looks nice but is ultimately far more difficult to understand then just looking at an alphabetical list in a dropdown. Auto-picking your departure city based on your current location is admittedly a…

Having tried the new virginamerica.com site just now, I don't really see a big difference between their site and anyone else's. Having booked through a lot of different airline sites over the last 15 years, I want to say that the differences between airline sites were much greater in the early web years.

All the airline sites seemed to have converged to a common model. They all follow exactly the same flow: pick cities and dates, then pricing, then sign in, etc. There was far greater variation in the flow in the early years.

> but from a usability perspective it might just be the worst

Oh, I can cite major airline websites that are much worse from a usability perspective. Trying to book a flight on any Brazilian airline is impossible unless you're Brazilian. That's because every airline in Brazil has inexplicably decided that they want you to enter your Brazilian identity number -- explained in more detail here:

http://brazilsense.com/index.php?title=Booking_a_domestic_fl...

If you're not Brazilian, you don't have such a number of course. Note that this is not any sort of legal requirement; it's just thoughtlessness about usability by the airlines.

I expect a lot of indignation this summer when visitors try to arrange flights inside of Brazil during the World Cup.

Re: The new VirginAmerica.com

#92

Post by swalsh »

smackfu wrote: post #22
swalsh wrote: post #5

I love that the default city is based on location.

I'm in Connecticut and it defaults to Orlando instead of Boston. Odd that other people are seeing a different default.

my guess is it defaults to the closest city that they have flights from. I don't think virgin flies from connecticut.

Re: The new VirginAmerica.com

#93

Post by smackfu »

swalsh wrote: post #92
smackfu wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in Connecticut and it defaults to Orlando instead of Boston. Odd that other people are seeing a different default.

my guess is it defaults to the closest city that they have flights from. I don't think virgin flies from connecticut.

Yeah, they fly from Boston and New York. But maybe this system doesn't have location services enabled, so it just picked something random.

Re: The new VirginAmerica.com

#94

Post by Myrmornis »

In terms of implementation, it's interesting that they chose ugly URLs which encode everything

/book/rt/a1c1i1/sfo_bos/20140524_20140528

Note the a1c1i1: that's "1 Adult 1 Child 1 Infant" and it changes as you adjust the widgets (without a page refresh).

Also, minor detail, but I'm interested to see that they use PUT as well as POST to update the server with the selections. So that's following modern "REST" guidelines (use verbs properly) but the URLs are anything but!

EDIT: I put "REST" in quotes to refer vaguely to modern API practices. I know REST is strictly something else, please let's not talk about that it's really boring.

Re: The new VirginAmerica.com

#95

Post by andrewfong »

Myrmornis wrote: post #94

In terms of implementation, it's interesting that they chose ugly URLs which encode everything /book/rt/a1c1i1/sfo_bos/20140524_20140528 Note the a1c1i1: that's "1 Adult 1 Child 1 Infant" and it changes as you adjust the widgets (without a page refresh). Also, minor detail, but I'm interested to see that they use PUT as well as POST to update the server with the selections. So that's following modern "REST" guideline…

Maybe they encode everything in the URL to allow the back button to effectively function as an undo button.

EDIT: I take that back. Apparently, the back button does not undo something like adding a child to your booking.

Re: The new VirginAmerica.com

#96

Post by alister »

Myrmornis wrote: post #94

In terms of implementation, it's interesting that they chose ugly URLs which encode everything /book/rt/a1c1i1/sfo_bos/20140524_20140528 Note the a1c1i1: that's "1 Adult 1 Child 1 Infant" and it changes as you adjust the widgets (without a page refresh). Also, minor detail, but I'm interested to see that they use PUT as well as POST to update the server with the selections. So that's following modern "REST" guideline…

It's gotten to the point that whenever I want to post a URL in an article or email a URL to someone, I need to sanitize it. I don't know what information I might be leaking.

If the URL looks like it might have some hidden information, what I usually do nowadays is to navigate to that location from a separate browser (in which I have no passwords, logins, cookies, history), and cut and paste the URL from there.

Re: The new VirginAmerica.com

#97

Post by Myrmornis »

alister wrote: post #96
Myrmornis wrote: post #94

In terms of implementation, it's interesting that they chose ugly URLs which encode everything /book/rt/a1c1i1/sfo_bos/20140524_20140528 Note the a1c1i1: that's "1 Adult 1 Child 1 Infant" and it changes as you adjust the widgets (without a page refresh). Also, minor detail, but I'm interested to see that they use PUT as well as POST to update the server with the selections. So that's following modern "REST" guideline…

It's gotten to the point that whenever I want to post a URL in an article or email a URL to someone, I need to sanitize it. I don't know what information I might be leaking. If the URL looks like it might have some hidden information, what I usually do nowadays is to navigate to that location from a separate browser (in which I have no passwords, logins, cookies, history), and cut and paste the URL from there.

> what I usually do nowadays is to navigate to that location from a separate browser (in which I have no passwords, logins, cookies, history)

incognito/porn mode should work for that too

Re: The new VirginAmerica.com

#98

Post by state »

Somewhat unrelated: I spent the majority of the day on a VA flight and I feel like I'm still recovering from sitting under those colored lights. Really, seriously, what is the benefit? At first I just felt nauseous, and after a while it just turned in to a dull headache.

Usually air travel is great and productive, but that "club" lighting has got to go.

Re: The new VirginAmerica.com

#100

Post by robertnealan »

alister wrote: post #91
robertnealan wrote: post #87

From a design perspective this is one of the most beautiful airline booking designs I've ever seen, but from a usability perspective it might just be the worst (save for maybe RyanAir). The cities being laid out in a grid looks nice but is ultimately far more difficult to understand then just looking at an alphabetical list in a dropdown. Auto-picking your departure city based on your current location is admittedly a…

Having tried the new virginamerica.com site just now, I don't really see a big difference between their site and anyone else's. Having booked through a lot of different airline sites over the last 15 years, I want to say that the differences between airline sites were much greater in the early web years. All the airline sites seemed to have converged to a common model. They all follow exactly the same flow: pick citi…

It has the same functionality as any other site, but many of the ways in which it's presented is far less easy to use (for instance, the calendar select is pretty looking but not nearly as obvious to use as even the standard ugly jQueryUI calendar widget).

The Brazilian airline policy of requiring an identity number is definitely a terrible decision on their part, but that doesn't excuse other airlines from making needlessly flashy and overcomplicated complicated UI's.

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