[Sigia-l] Homunculus Wanted: Flight Booking Interface Behaviour

[T. Karsjens]

My experience is that most business types don't book their own travel
online.  They call their most trusted travel agent and have them book it for
them.  

Which, to me, means that the travel agents of the world are a much larger
percentage of the user base for travel sites than joe public, considering
the percentage of business travel versus all others.

So, if you want a review of the usability of a travel site, ask the primary
user base what they think.  I was in a position a couple of years ago to ask
about 2000 travel agents what they thought of travel sites.  A large
percentage said that sites like Orbitz, Travelocity, and Expedia all did a
bang up job filling their intended roles.  Of course, every travel agent
that I talked to had suggestions for improvement, but the over all
impression was decent with the only near homogenous complaint being the
technology behind the interface not working. Most of the agents that I
talked to thought aspects of one particular site was better than another,
but they used all of them nearly equally.

While we may find it appalling, bear in mind that they, at least a couple of
years ago, by and large do not.  This may be a case of an 80/20 rule where
we are in the 20%.  I think the larger issue is asking ourselves why we get
so bent out of shape when we are the ones falling in the "20%".

Timothy Karsjens
Interface Architect
Agile Methods Advocate
Almost Human Studios

-----Original Message-----
From: sigia-l-bounces at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-bounces at asis.org] On Behalf
Of Steven L. MacCall
Sent: Tuesday, June 07, 2005 7:59 AM
To: 'Anjali Arora, NYU'; sigia-l at asis.org
Subject: [Sigia-l] Homunculus Wanted: Flight Booking Interface Behaviour


Has anyone wondered how all of this emotion (or the lack thereof, in the
case of business travel) has been successfully managed within the management
architecture of real travel agencies over the years?

Perhaps we're asking IA/UI design to do too much, especially in the travel
sector ... where's a homunculus when you need one ;-) 

Oh, I forgot, travel agents require expensive health insurance and
retirement benefits!

slm

-----Original Message-----
From: sigia-l-bounces at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-bounces at asis.org] On Behalf
Of Anjali Arora, NYU
Sent: Tuesday, June 07, 2005 6:56 AM
To: sigia-l at asis.org
Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] Lynch Mob Wanted: Flight Booking Interface Behaviour

Right Andrew, often times all that the user needs is to get the job done &
move on ( and not have too many things, especially emotions of anger &
frustration take over the process : )
And this too would be a successful example of designing the user experience.

But it's also about knowing who you are catering to. For the leisure
traveler or the family going on vacation, the design strategy would be
different from one aimed at the business traveler. for the former, the bonus
of a magical experience ( over & above makings things just work well, very
important no doubt) such as stoking the imagination or excitement or longing
for those distant lands might be very appropriate.
( Now what would be really fun to do is to create a just-right magical
experience for the business traveler, & I mean more than just efficiently
getting the booking done!!)

Best.
-anjali

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