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Redesigning the United flight search interface in Photoshop

nathanbarry.com

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Re: Redesigning the United flight search interface in Photoshop

#13

Post by nathanbarry »

kylelibra wrote: post #11

These redesigns are always nice to look at, but there are usually a lot of functional considerations they ignore.

Yep, there are always things missed. This redesign is actually for teaching Photoshop techniques more than it is about getting the best possible United search screen. For example, I didn't make any major changes to the flow or UX side of the design (which is needed for a real redesign!).

Re: Redesigning the United flight search interface in Photoshop

#15

Post by dubcanada »

coldcode wrote: post #9

You must understand why this is not possible to do. D.O.T. rules apply to any agency that collects money for air travel. Everything on that page is subject to rules that change continuously and you can get fined massive amounts if you guess wrong. My employer's lawyers are incredibly paranoid about any UI change as we in the past had to pay a huge penalty because a few words were incorrect. So we wind up being stuck…

Then why do all the different airlines have different UI's?

While what you say is correct, you can easily redesign UI and follow the rules.

Re: Redesigning the United flight search interface in Photoshop

#17

Post by cliveowen »

Fi did something way more advanced[1] and even implemented it in HTML/CSS/JS as you can see from the demo. There are a lot of reason to redesign an company website, but there are even more not to. These are ones that come to mind:

-retrocompatibility (the website has to work for the widest possible audience)

-legacy code (you can't waste tens of men-hours for something unproven and of dubious impact on your business. I mean, people have no problem booking flights with the current website)

-implementing in code a photoshop design presents its own challenges and would require a considerable investment of resources. Usually the result would be worse than what planned due to intrinsic limitations of web technologies

-even the smallest change has to be approved by a committee, this is a big corporate entity, not a startup. A radical redesign is likely out of discussion.

[1] http://www.f-i.com/fi/airlines/

Re: Redesigning the United flight search interface in Photoshop

#18

Post by colmvp »

dubcanada wrote: post #15
coldcode wrote: post #9

You must understand why this is not possible to do. D.O.T. rules apply to any agency that collects money for air travel. Everything on that page is subject to rules that change continuously and you can get fined massive amounts if you guess wrong. My employer's lawyers are incredibly paranoid about any UI change as we in the past had to pay a huge penalty because a few words were incorrect. So we wind up being stuck…

Then why do all the different airlines have different UI's? While what you say is correct, you can easily redesign UI and follow the rules.

Exactly. I did design work a few years ago on a very well known airline in the U.S. and it wasn't much of an issue to re-design the checkout flow.

Re: Redesigning the United flight search interface in Photoshop

#19

Post by dylanrw »

lol hello! Let me 'redesign' your site without a brief, knowledge of the business, or any idea about the demographics/market/technology involved. I'm a designer with photoshop woohooo! /end snarky attitude

All that aside, a photoshop comp 'redesign' (re-skin may be more accurate) without a brief or objectives besides 'make it easier to use/prettier' is not design. At best it's speculation, at a glance it's just a different layout, at worst it's a grab for traffic to your blog so you can sell more of books.

A design is a solution to a problem, if you don't start with a well defined problem you're not designing...

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