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 with all sorts of idiotic messaging and other crappola.<p>Now anyone who does not collect money is exempt, like Google Flights or Hipmunk, and they can design anything they want. But an airline or OTA that collects the money has to deal with the DOT and its insane rules and the paranoid lawyers.<p>I like the design though, very nice.
Remember when the American Airlines employee got fired for giving feedback to an unsolicited re-design? Also, here are some other examples of airline website re-designs [2].<p>I can't find it now, but the AA designer's response discussed the challenges of re-designing these sites, would be appropriate to relate that here.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091106/0337536829.shtml" rel="nofollow">http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091106/0337536829.shtml</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2010/08/02/please-let-me-redesign-your-airline-for-you/" rel="nofollow">https://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2010/08/02/please-let-me-red...</a>
1. Guys, you are missing the point. This is not about redesigning the United website, it is about how to use Photoshop to design a web interface.<p>2. Nathan, why would you design something in Photoshop instead of directly prototyping it in html/css? I think designing straight in html/css is already pretty fast.<p>You also run into the danger of adding some nice looking effects that are easy to add in Photoshop but not so easy to implement in CSS.
I like what you did here. I like your photoshop tutorials. I think you should stick with those.<p>Your book on iOS design was, quite frankly, a waste of money. You touched the surface of interesting design topics and then never dived in. It's a lot harder to teach the principles of design and how to break down features into UI than it is to show pictures of successful designs. Your terminology for the standard controls in iOS was also incorrect.<p>You never went into why you design the way you do. By just putting up photoshop videos, you are able to deliver by not overselling what you have to offer. Please keep doing more photoshop videos.
Just off the bat, it looks a lot easier to read and understand. The current design might be done to support older browsers but I think most of the users should not be punished for the few who still use older browsers.
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:<p>-retrocompatibility (the website has to work for the widest possible audience)<p>-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)<p>-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<p>-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.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.f-i.com/fi/airlines/" rel="nofollow">http://www.f-i.com/fi/airlines/</a>
I think the redesign could benefit from better organization and more contrast. I felt like "search by" was unnecessarily cramped in a corner, the input fields weren't standing out, and the options at the bottom could be better visually organized.
It's a redesign, but not really a re-think. Check out Bret Victor's "Magic Ink" for a completely new interface for the task: <a href="http://worrydream.com/MagicInk/#p227" rel="nofollow">http://worrydream.com/MagicInk/#p227</a><p>(and if you like it, read the whole article; it's fantastic).
Really well done. What's now painfully obvious to me that I hadn't realized before seeing your design is how much easier cognitively it is to place the destinations horizontally. Makes a ton of sense and you rarely see that.
Slightly OT but quite interesting: <a href="http://petesmart.co.uk/rethink-the-airline-boarding-pass/" rel="nofollow">http://petesmart.co.uk/rethink-the-airline-boarding-pass/</a>
As nice as this might be, it looks approximately nothing like the rest of the site, which is pretty jarring. That shade of purple isn't even in United's color scheme.
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<p>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.<p>A design is a solution to a problem, if you don't start with a well defined problem you're not designing...