JukeBox System

Apparently when I sent in my post yesterday it didn't go through, so here's the second try.

Pretty much I came up with the idea of an old-time jukebox, which shows a few songs on each page with a little information about each, and started from there.  The system would be fully interactive, and I used (read: stole) a lot of ideas from current gen touch screen phones and displays that have already been proven to work.  This means that to turn between pages you actually pull the page from right to left as you would a book page, just sliding your hand across the screen.  The only clickables would be the movie cover and the buttons for "more info" and "rent" below that, so there is no fear of losing the current screen.

I also went with the idea of multiple search types.  As you can see, I started with just the two, basic and advances, but then added another one I had been thinking about that is a little more social-driven, and that is a quick pick of the past 10 movies both rented and returned, along with the ratings they have been given, no further info.  The advanced search gives the main fields (as I would consider them) to search by, but the screen returned gives information that is much easier to search by, such as ratings and names.  This screen is scrollable much like Adobe Reader or the iPhone, where the user would just drag the page up to scroll along, as, once again, the only things that are clickable are the buttons to search by on top and the links on the left.

The fun feature I added to this was the ability to actually watch the cinematic trailer for the movie as would appear in the theaters, only a small kiosk-screen-sized version, just in case the person would like to have a small sample of the movie they are about to rent.  This screen also gives more indepth info, such as bit-actors, cameos, awards won, etc, that cannot be seen on the main screen because of the clutter it would cause.

I am espcially proud of the checkout screen, once again borrowed (stolen) from online shopping stores, where the user is able to see and compare all items in their cart, as well as remove an item or return to shopping.  The user can still click on the item for a more in depth description and return to the checkout whenever they want.

The return movie is a simple rating's page.  Once return movie is selected, the user would be prompted to insert the movie (screen not shown) and then when the movie has been scanned in the user is prompted to rate it using a sliding ratings scale.  This can be skipped if the user chooses, but if they do rate the movie then the movie's rating will be updated online and will effect it's overall rating within the rental system.

-Sean Lander

Kiosk Design

My design doesn't depart significantly from the Red Box design, but I think it has some important changes. 

I've spent all day tweaking the UI on my computer (KDE 4.1 with Compiz), so this design might be influenced by that a little bit.  I had to remind myself that kiosks don't usually have graphics cards, so it probably can't have drag and drop and it definitely can't have a dynamically updated recommendation cloud. 

Now I've heard some talk about putting the info for a movie on the same page as the browsing so you don't have to click back and forth, and I'm not sure I'm quite down with that.  I'm the sort of user what likes to maximize everything, so I don't really want to compromise on space.  That said, you don't need the whole space for browsing; sacrificing the sides for sidebars works great.

One neat thing that my prototype has that doesn't quite get across in a static model is how the panel on the left shifts every ten seconds between Genres, Recommendations, Most Popular, and Discounted.  If the user interacts with any one of them, it stays there, and they can change it up at the top.

The only concern I have with this design is that users may potentially log in and then forget to log out.  I tried to make the fact that they were logged in unnecessarily salient, but I'm not sure what else can be done about it. 

Kiosk System

    The evolution of my prototype started from four sketches and a list.  The list had all the features I could want in my kiosk.  I then put down different options on how I could accomplish each feature.  From there I made sketches of different parts of my kiosk.  I tried to include different ways I could display movies as well as search.  I also wanted a simple "cart" system and tried to design this. 
    The prototype is in storyboard form.  It goes from the welcome page all the way up the check out.  This storyboard shows how someone would pick a movie based on genre.  It then selects three movies and puts them in the cart.  The cart can be a compare screen.  The user can pick to remove a movie from their cart in this screen.  The one button I put on here that I realize is unnecessary is the "Rent This" button.  From the cart, if someone clicks "check out" logically everything still in the cart will be added to the total for the cart.  Then there is a screen that gives the price total and the choices of payment.  From this screen, the user can also remove movie choices as well.


--
           ~MARIN KOBIN~

Basic Functions first

I'm still a little conflicted on how it should look.
I like the idea of having a panel on the left with the larger picture concepts on it but i feel like this will lead to a lot of blank space so I'm debating putting this section up top with the browse filters. but keeping it out to the side makes it easy to add another function later (after finishing my story board, i decided to add another button there).


What my assignment 1 sample seemed to be most concerned with was being able to both browse around when they have no idea what they want, and yet also find the specific movie they want if they do know what they want.
With that in mind i tried to think of ways that people might browse through a store as i designed the interface. I started with the basics of genre and alphabet. As i type this out i can now think of two other sorting methods, rating, and (if applicable) price.

The other debate i was having was whether or not to do a double column of movies in the presentation panel. the story board uses a single column and has whitespace, but the paper dimensions more resemble widescreen which not all monitors are.

-Andrew

KISS

My idea focuses mostly around genre, since that's what i found to be key in my proj1 research. It also focuses around dynamic, pretty pictures and bold colors (not pictured!) because if this kiosk is going to be sitting in the middle of somewhere it should always have pretty pictures being displayed :3

The main screen is organized by genre. Each of the 4 major genres has a big display picture of a popular/current movie, and the smaller boxes on the side preview other movies. The header leads to a listing of all movies in the genre; clicking the thumbnails lead directly to that movie. Pictures rotate between all the top 4-5 in the genre. There's a banner at top for really big-title releases or coming soon ads. There's also a search bar at the bottom.

Clicking the genre leads to MORE GENRE. Did I mention this is a touchscreen interface? It's a touchscreen interface, so like the iPhone or whatever, you slide your finger to scroll through all the movies. There are also tabs on the side to go back a screen, or sort based on another category. The genre boxes are still up on top so you can change your mind at any point.

Clicking the movie leads to MOVIE DETAILS. Every relevant category (director, actors, year, rating...) are linked to a search for other movies in the genre with that specific characteristic. For example, clicking the rating on FRYER MAN would give you all 4.5 star action movies. Also, big huge "buy" button.

Love,
Zach~!

prototype

As I sat down to try to sketch out my prototype, I found out that actually translating the ideas and concepts from assignment 1 into a concrete representation was a more involved process than I had imagined.  My design called for a quick and easy guest login to quickly rent new release movies and pay upfront, as well as supporting a Netflix-style service with a wide selection, home delivery and dowloadable content.  The prototype I'm showing here illustrates the steps of the guest login, though the membership screens would appear very similar and would offer "download" or "delivery" buttons instead of the payment screen shown here.  The input controls for the kiosk system would consist of a card reader slot, a trackball with a button for clicking and a numpad for data entry.  Everything in a blue box in the prototype represents a clickable field.  The main interface for selecting movies includes a scrollable thumbnailed list of availible movies, showing box art with movie title, starring actors and genre in text below, and a shopping cart.  Clicking on a movie selects it, while clicking on the add to cart button puts it into the shopping cart, which is another thumbnailed list much like the main list, and shows the total cost at the bottom.  Selecting a movie from the shopping cart and clicking "remove from cart" sends it back to the list.  Both lists are updated in real time.  The next screen prompts for payment in much the same way as an ATM machine, and the final screen asks the user to take their movie(s), with a reminder that additional features can be used with a membership subscription.

-Kevin E

Kiosk Design

       Well, as of right now, my pictures won't load, so I'll paint you a mental image.  My kiosk would start out with 2 simple options, to rent or to return.  Returning just has you drop in your movies, and the machine itself would scan the movies to see who took them out, so I don't have to worry about it.  From the returning screen you can get back to the rental option, or you can just exit if that's all you wanted to do. 
       Once you have clicked the rent button, you are taken to another page where you can log in with your user info (registered users get 17% off all rentals!) or you can just continue as a guest, or something like that, and not get any special user help.  You can also exit.  If you wanted to become a user, I can't decide whether you would register at the machine, or online.  Probably online.
        If you entered in your log-in info, you would be taken to a screen that's very happy and welcoming.  From there, you can go to the movie rental screen.  You can also check what movies you have rented, or add more money to your fun user-only card that you can use to check out movies.  No non-users allowed.
        If you continued as guest (turn to page 75...) you are taken directly to the rental page.

        The rental page consists of five panels.  Two smaller panels on the left contain information like new releases and what people who have rented the movies you are looking at have rented.  The middle panel has the main search function, with different text boxes for info.  You can click little tabs on the sides of the boxes for more info.  Theres a window on the bottom that displays search results.  You can then select a movie and add it, which brings up the fourth window that displays movies in the checkout basket.  You select a movie and then click remove, or you could check out.  The last window displays which movies you currently have checked out, if any.

        The checkout screen just displays what you are checking out, then prompts the user if this is ok or not.  If it is, the user proceeds to the payment menu.  If it's not ok, then the use can go back and change things around.  That's as much as I have so far.  There are a few more things I need to straighten out, but that will get done in later sketches.


-Ben Reback

Keep It Simple

Looking at the other posts here, I see lots of really "user friendly" designs.

I took a slightly different tack in my design - I didn't think that people had trouble using kiosks because they didn't understand how the task they tried to accomplish corresponded to the interface, they just failed because the kiosk interface was too dumb.  So, the first thing I'd do is stick a keyboard on the kiosk and forget about the idea of having a "real-world" video rental store metaphor.  In my sketches, I clearly divided two tasks: searching for a PARTICULAR movie, and trying to get a movie suggestion without knowing a title/actor/etc.  The kiosk's usability comes from people's familiarity with computer searching and filtering.  I also made the buttons really big and obvious so that a touchscreen would be usable.

Another thing I think is important is that sorting dynamically show the results.  That way you can use a free-form text box without users wondering "am I typing the right thing to get the results I want?".  The computer system would be responsible for parsing the users' input in whatever form it comes.  A system that works like this already is Google Maps; you can type an address in pretty much any format and it'll understand what you meant.  Very powerful and very easy to use.

Bryan Jacobs

Leave the Wizard in Oz...

Sorry about the pictures being so bad. I took them with my laptop's built-in camera. See me in class for prettier drawings/diagrams.

Aside from the little features I'm throwing in this design, my main approach is to try to avoid "the Wizard", as we've been told how terrible it is, and I personally get really fed up with Windows every time I need to run a wizard....

The first picture is basically a map of my system. You get an opening screen, which gives users the options to log in to their personal account, or to simply rent a movie. The more frequent movie-renters will probably be the ones with accounts, so they get all sorts of cool features. I didn't want the account thing to clutter up the process for non-account holders, so I put a Quick Pick option right at the beginning.

Logging in takes you to the Main Page, which has all sorts of links to go to. You can go straight to the movie rental part (which is where the QuickPick takes you), you can look at any incoming messages/recommendations you may have from friends, you can check the top 5 options for movie rentals, you can see what's in your queue, or you can change options. Each of these links will take you to an external page, but most will lead you back to the home page.

The inbox feature is much like our beloved Gmail. I kept this standardized because most e-mail-esque services have the same layout, and I didn't want to cause any trouble. The feature with this e-mail is that it's moreso about getting movie recommendations from other friends/account holders, as opposed to just any e-mail. This will keep the scope small, and lessen any sort of clutter/load.

In terms of the Top 5, the main page shows a list of the 5 most popular options, but clicking on that will bring you to a separate page that has several lists of top 5s (i.e. 5 Recently Rented, 5 Top Rented, 5 Top Rated, etc.). From there, you can either select a movie (which will take you straight to the Movie Info screen), or go back to main. Not a lot of wizardry, not a lot of freedom. 

The Rental Screen is organized alphabetically, with a Search function and a Re-Arrange function for quick-finding of titles. Selecting a movie takes you to the Movie Info screen,which gives you all of the information on that movie, as well as otpins for Rental or Enqueue.

Each screen has a "Back" button in the lower-right-hand corner for consistency.

The options pane is probably the coolest part. It allows users to fully customize their home screen, as well as select individual options for each function/page. This is both cool and dynamic. I really like that feature, as it allows the designer to design for one, but the user to customize for themselves.

In my head, I have a very dynamic and interactive design, which I'm hoping to exemplify with my prototypes. My sketches try to show what I mean, but after all, it's just paper.

If only we had some sort of...enchantment...to make the ink move....oh no, not a Wizard!

Cheers,

-Bad

Movie Kiosk Sketches

During my observations for the first assignment, and in using Redbox
since then, I think the area which could be most improved is the
process of selecting movies to rent. This is in many ways the most
important action that a user performs, and I believe that it could be
improved.

My first sketch makes two major changes. First, detailed movie
information is shown at the same time as a list of other related
movies, so the user doesn't have to repeatedly flip between a detail
and list view to select titles. Second, the user's shopping cart is
always shown on screen. This fits better with how renting in a movie
store works: several movies can be gathered as you browse, and then
some or all of the selected titles are chosen to rent. By showing the
cart at all times, the user can be reminded of what they've chosen,
and quickly remove unwanted items.

My second sketch also includes a shopping cart that is always visible
on the screen. This design uses a novel approach to browsing movies. A
grid of film covers is shown on the screen; rather than clicking a
title to view more detailed information, the user moves a "magnifying
glass" over the images, revealing detailed information about the film.
Many movies can be browsed quickly in this fashion.

(I don't have a scanner, so I can't include my sketches in this post.
Sorry.)

-- Kevin Gessner

DeeVee D.

I chose to concentrate on a system that would mimic the actions I found in my studies from assignment one.  I noticed that people would take a quick glance at a box and then carry the movie around that they might be interested in renting while they continue to look at others.  Then, they would read more information on a move or two to make their final decision.  My system allows for side-by-side comparisons of movies with the familiar concept of a "shopping cart".  However, my idea is much more personable than a simple shopping cart.  DeeVee is the user's personal assistant who will "hold" the movies, "put them back on the shelf", and "carry them to the check-out" for the user.
My first sketch of the screens has a poor layout, but helped to develop the idea of DeeVee.  The next four images are my second attempt which actually organize the interface.  I added another screen since the first home screen seemed to be throwing way too much informaiton at the user right at the beginning.  I wanted to limit the number of screens used for repeat users, but I didn't want to intimidate the new user with a page full of text to take in all at once.
In the actual system I would include many more sorting options, but this is not the task that I am going to focus on for the assignment so I chose only an alphabetical list and allowed for the lookup of a title.

-Robin Miller

Kiosk Redesign

My sketches are a little... uh, scattered, but here they are.

So at first I plopped some buttons down where I thought they might be able to go. I tried to figure out where I wanted the  "Sort by" (genre, alphabetical, new release) options, and how they were going to work.  I played with the idea of making them into tabs, buttons at the top, buttons/drop-down menus at the side...

Originally I had a "Add to Cart" button always present, but then I realized this would only be useful if you could drag/drop movies to it, so on my prototype I made this only available when viewing a movie's info.

I realized that given this is suppose to be a kiosk, it would be more convenient if the scroll bar/buttons were larger. So on my second page of ideas I started making large back/next buttons

I decided to stick with the "Sort by" buttons being on the right, and chose to have "Genre" and "A-Z" pop up a window with choices to choose from.

In my lo-fi prototype (which is not pictured here), I basically just rearranged the next/back buttons to be down/up buttons set off to the side, which allowed me to make the area for displaying movie info larger.

~Emily Vukman

Interface Design Concepts

The two of the three sketches (Figures 1, and 2) are basic concepts of
design ideas. They represent different groupings of search and
results. Figure 1 begins with tabs which represent different search
methods, then within each tab the user is given the ability to search
the results or move through them. This was my initial concept, based on
the idea that searching for the movies should be broken up into a series
of steps. Figure 2 is less concerned with how to search as how
information should be displayed so the main point of this concept was
the separation of searching and results.
Figure 3 is a combination of figures 1 and 2. With both tabs and the
partitioning of search and results. The tabs in this design are for
separating searches from browsing since from our discussions and
assignment 1 it is clear that some people prefer one over the other.
Within the search tab is the design from figure 2.

-Gabe Schwartz

Expedia.tmi

When i first opened the Expedia page my first reaction was simply, "woah, too much information," but once i started trying to go through the motions of getting from A to B, it didn't seem too bad. I was able to say that i wanted a flight from Boston to NYC and then gave me options for a hotel to stay at. I could organize the Hotels by price or rating or a variety of other options.  When i originally told it to book just a flight to New York City, it asked me which airport i wanted. When i also booked a hotel it automatically choose an airport (i assume based on hotel proximity.

The tasks that come to mind are the basics, such as:
-Book a flight from City A to city B and back again.
-Find a hotel to stay at while in City B
-Arrange transport to the airport in city A, and from airport B to the hotel
-Find a vacation deal without knowing a destination in advance.
-Book a cruise.

-Andrew

Expedia!

The first thing I notice with Expedia is some representation consistency issues.  After I put in my locations, it asked me (repeatedly) if my times were flexible (which of course they are) but then it asks me to select my destinations again from a list!

At this point I noticed that there were a lot of things it asked me repeatedly, like if I wanted to book a car, or a hotel.  Annoying, but presumably in line with their business model.

While their website is very cluttered, it does a pretty good job of mitigating that.  The parts of the page that I actually cared about were highlighted or bolded, and the top of the page has a nice navigational bar that conforms to my expectations.  When I got into the activity I wanted, it did a good job with layout, with a good flow and noticeable, if inconsistent, labels and headings.  It uses arrows for links that take me to the next page, which is intuitive.  It numbers headings when appropriate, and it sequesters summary/navigation tools in the side bar or the top of the page.

In general, Expedia is cluttered and annoying, but it does a good job showing me what I should do to navigate the crap

Expedia

The first thing I noticed about the interface was that the home page is throwing a lot of information at the user at once.  There are 3 main headings,"build your trip", "save on top travel deals" and "find your perfect trip".  All of the headings are presented in a way that they all seem equally important.  Each heading also has an enormous amount of sub-headings and links to click on.  I find this main page uncomfortable to look at; it feels like Expedia is yelling at me.  There are also a lot of ads... I feel like there should be a link that lets me skip this page.

Moving on, I decide to book a round trip flight from Rochester to Miami, because it's never too early to start thinking about spring break right?  Anyway once I've locked into a certain part of the website and ignore the other two main headings, this part is fairly straightforward.  Booking a round trip flight is selected by default, and choosing a date brings up a calendar that I found intuitive and easy to use.  I select my departure and return date by clicking on the calendar dates, one ticket for an adult is selected by default, and the book flight button is right at the bottom of the frame.  So far the ticket selection process has a pretty natural and intuitive flow.

After a brief loading screen that tells me Expedia is searching for flights, I'm brought to a screen that looks considerably different from the initial homepage.  The navigation bar at the top looks the same, but information about my flight is located on a sidebar that wasn't present before and the bulk of the page is devoted to pricing information for the flights selected.  This is a better layout than before, but the change of scenery is jarring.
All of the information on the page is devoted to departure flight information.  The price before taxes and fees, the total cost, departure/arrival times and the airline are all listed in a fairly straightforward and regular presentation, along with a button to select any of the listed flights.

The next screen is a clone of the previous one, but with return flight information.  Works for me.

The next screen is a confirmation screen, reviewing all of the previous information in one location.  It is laid out much the same as the previous two pages, with advertisements for credit cards and hotel/rental car packages claiming the ability to save me money.  I find this annoying but I understand Expedia is trying to sell their services.

Next, Expedia wants me to sign in.  I don't have an account.  Luckily there's a "continue as a guest" option.  Let's go.

I'm starting to get impatient.  The next step is a painfully long list of optional activities to add on to my bill.  Everything from sight-seeing guides to "deals" on local attractions is presented to me.  At the very bottom the most prominent link is a green "reprice" button that makes me think that I need to select one of the options and spend more money before I can get my tickets.  At second glance I notice the "continue booking" link which is much less prominently displayed.

Now I'm asked to set up a voucher so that I can confirm my identity during the booking.  There are fields for name, address, phone number, etc. but at this point I'm drawing the line, since I'm not really going to Miami anytime soon and Expedia has killed any curiosity I might have about their online booking process.  The long lists, excessive forms and obnoxious suggestions that imply I don't know what I'm doing have taught me that I probably don't want to use this service to buy tickets for an already planned vacation.  Maybe if I wanted to let Expedia plan my vacation for me I'd consider it.

On the plus side, the drawn out process of an ostensibly simple task such as buying plane tickets to a predetermined destination will probably make for a suitable task for the upcoming project.

-Kevin E.

Expedia

Since I live in Arkansas, I thought I'd try to "book" a flight home for the Christmas vacation. Apparently flexible dates are not an option since both the Rochester and Little Rock airports are small. I couldn't remember the three letter designation for the LR airport, but expedia is smart in that regard and helps out by showing potential airports as you type. It found flights, but for reasons I don't entirely understand, the price price ends up significantly more than advertised.

As far as layout and aesthetic is concerned, I don't really have any complaints. I found browsing straightforward...until I tried to use the browser's back button. For some reason, it won't let you browse back to the home screen once you have started your first search.

I also thought I would try out travelocity, and immediately managed to find a trip within the acceptable time window for nearly 300 dollars cheaper. I have no doubts that expedia would have found the same trip with (alot) more tweaking of the search parameters, but its tools are not nearly as complete or easy to use.

~Andy Wood

Expedia. Dot Com!

So, not even thinking about this assignment, last week I checked out expedia.com to see if I could leave town before a few papers, tests, and projects were due.  It was my first time using the site, and it left me with an "Eh, whatever" impression.  I feel that I got lucky in that my eyes looked at the left side of the page first because, had I not seen the place where I enter in my desired flight information, I would have been lost in the multitude of potential features.  However, someone over there had the idea to make every possible link look like an ad.  They assumed that because internet ads are catchy and make you look at them, that to make you look at the whole expedia page, everything needed to be shiny and have a picture.  Honestly, I don't care which hotel I stay in, I just booked an $8,500 trip to Hong Kong (that's JUST the flight.  Round trip.  I think my returning flight leaves before I can physically get there).  I didn't really have that much trouble with the interface itself, but the site was very cluttered and had a bunch of places to click that do not apply to me.  My experience was neither here nor there.

-Ben Reback 

I hate unclickable things

Two things caught my eye when I loaded up Expedia - the right and left columns (I ignored the middle since it seemed to be mostly ads). I had a destination in mind that I wanted to explore, so I looked at the world map in the right column and clicked around in regions until I found Turkey (grouped together with Greece in a single region). From the region screen I tried to select Turkey again, it turned orange as I hovered over it, and I clicked it... And nothing happened. Apparently I had to click the name "Turkey" on the text list of regions below the map. Inconsistent!

From there, I was given a list of hotels in Istanbul. I selected a hotel that looked nice (although I had no idea how they were organized - it was set to "Expedia picks", but the first listing had an average rating of 3.0 and I found one with a 4.2 rating further down) and decided to book the next two weeks there. After searching for a LONG time (it must've been a full minute) it told me that no rooms were available for my huge date range and gave me the option to search other hotels. I really would have liked an option to prune my dates according to what the hotel had open, but there was no indication of how full the hotel was during the period I selected.

I came out of this brief experience with two tasks: Using the world map to select a location, and booking a hotel & airline for a long period of time.

-Zach Alexander

Expedia Evaluation

The layout of the pages are not particularly interesting. For each page
the search for product box is on the left and the rest of the page is
devoted to related information. However, only on the first page is the
content highlighted by boxes. This makes it easy to "build your trip",
as it is called, from the first page as opposed to using the tabs on the
top. The only advantage that I see in using the tabs on the top is that
the pages provide targeted information for each topic, cars, hotels,
flights, cruises, etc. In searching for a flight I found that though
the price information is highlighted the rest of the information about
flights seemed to be cluttered.

-Gabe Schwartz

Mmm... Upsells...

My notes on Expedia:

- I went to build a "trip home", trying to ONLY book a flight from ROC to IAD.  I selected dates next year, only to be informed that you could only book flights occurring between x/y/2008 and z/q/2009.  So I changed the dates to fall within the range (leaving my return on z/q/2009).  I was then told again that my return must be on or before z/q/2009.  Which it was.  z/q-1/2009 worked.  Bad boundary conditions.
- When I went to select my destinations on the initial page, I left the "flight only" radio button checked.  Then below that, there were checkboxes for adding hotels or cars.  This despite the fact that around 3 inches away there were radios for "flight + hotel" and "flight + car".  Which I hadn't selected.  On the next page I was again offered the option to add a car or hotel (more checkboxes).  At least they weren't checked by default.  While I was searching for my flight, an ad-looking box appeared telling me to "book together and save!" with a hotel and car.
- The page title was briefly "Secure Transaction Completed" or some such before I was forwarded to the results of my search.
- The pop-up calendar on the second page doesn't go away when I click outside of it.  I had to click the "close" link on it (at the bottom) to be able to see the things hidden beneath it.
- Some navigational portions of the site use links instead of buttons.  I'm not sure why they like Javascript so much.
- I left my window open for a while before clicking on the particular flight I wanted.  Expedia made me start over because "fares change continuously".

It looks to me like the push to book multiple things get in the way of the interface helping users with the tasks they actually want.  That's about all I have to say about it.

Bryan Jacobs

Clutter and CRAP

I'm from Texas, so I use one of these types of sites about three or four times a year to make trips home or to relatives.  All in all this is one of the most cluttered and annoying to look at sites I've seen.  The basic formula of "info on left, select in middle, enter account, done" remains the same, but the amount of just plain unnecessary stuff they try and throw at you over and over really starts to annoy.

From a crap perspective, it's not too shabby.  It seems to line up pretty well, and there is consistency in where things are place,at least in terms of header, and then left-middle-right content.  The different main points seem to stand out fairly well on the home page as well, having nice headers for each small boxed section so it's easy to know what it is you are looking at.  It's the overall amount of information thrown at the customer that gets annoying, however, and with the lack of a real "get back" feature as stated above (below?), it makes finding out "oh, I really did want that spa treatment/aromatherapy while I'm on my business trip" a hassle in the end, making you decide against it.

I tried, for fun, to use the business travel section just to see if there would be any differences, but sadly, when booking a flight, it takes you to the same screen every time.  A selection for "I just want a flight, damnit" would have been nice, but since they probably make their money off the advertisements of hotels, rental car agencies, and small attractions of the town able to pay for the ad space, it makes sense from their perspective.

One of the biggest problems I had, however, was the inability to get an advanced search from the homepage, but then after the search they add multiple options, from time of departure to airline to number of stops.  That, mixed with the addition of "we'll show you a nice price but it's about 100$ more when you're done" policies on taxes and baggage costs when showing the total for the trip kind of dampens the excitement of going on a trip for me.

They can keep their rental car deals, I think I'm going travelocity.  Gnomes are cooler, anyway.

-Sean

Expedia Evaluation

I visited Expedia.com planning to book (or at least, pretend to book)
a flight from Cleveland to Boston. I didn't have exact dates in minds,
but wanted to book sometime around New Year's. After I entered the
cities and dates I was interested in, I toggled "Flexible Dates", only
to have my information disappear--I had to re-enter it on a new form.
On the next page, I was shown a calendar of available dates for my
flight, around the end of December. While a few of the dates had a
price for flights on that date, most required me to click through to
view the flights and prices. This removed much of the ease that I was
hoping to gain by searching for flexible dates.

Once I picked a date, I had few problems selecting flights. The site
was always clear about my place in the process of selecting flights
and seats, and provided lots of information about each flight. After
that step, I ran in to more problems. On the numerous confirmation
pages, I constantly felt lost among the promotions and up-sells
cluttering the page. Plus, I couldn't go back to edit my itinerary, if
I wanted to make changes.

-- Kevin Gessner

Expedi-...uhhh.......

Hello all,

So I'm playing around with Expedia, as per our assignment, and I'm sort of writing this as I go, so we'll discover all sorts of goodies together.

First, I saw there are a ton of options when you first open the page. In fact, there are multiple ways to do everything. The altered color/design leads one to the "Build Your Trip" panel, which is good. In this frame, though, there's still an overload of options.

Each radio button has it's own set of controls and options, and the entire area changes in size/organization in accordance to what you want to do. For a first-time user/zero-time reserver, it was incredibly obnoxious. I've never reserved flights, or anything, really, so I'm looking for something simple I'm being forced to read every little field and every little button, and it's pretty obnoxious.

So my first inclination is to check out the Activities in Rochester, NY, because I enjoy being cynical. I put in some arbitrary dates (10/13-10/21), and it returned nothing. So I thought "well, this is Rochester....let's give it more time" and selected 10/13-1/1/09....still nothing. Okay, my next thought is to go for a bigger city. Say, San Diego. Still nothing. Las Vegas? No. NYC? Nope. What's the point in having a search feature that never returns any results?

Okay, so enough harassing the system. Time to go for the big guns: Flight + Hotel + Car. We're going on vacation! Rochester to Las Vegas 12/22-1/1/09. Sounds like a great time. 1 Room with 0 Adults, 0 Seniors, and 0 Children. Wait, what? Well, it let me do it, so why not.

After an inordinate amount of time searching, I have results. They're arbitrarily sorted by "Expedia Picks", which is okay. I click on "Price" and it has to re-calculate something in order to display the choices in order of (ascending) price. Obnoxious, but we'll let it slide. I've been given prices, but I'm not really sure what they entail? I've just been given a price associated to a hotel. What about flight? What about car?

So I decide to bite the bullet and click the Continue button. Now, for some reason, the trip price is $150 higher than it was? What changed? I'm so confused. This screen doesn't even have a "Continue" button to click. It just says "View package details. If the new price is unacceptable, you can choose different flights from the Package Details page". Well, I guess I'll do that, then.

This brings me to another cool page with lots of options. I can change my flight info, what type of room I want, and if I want a car or not (mind you, not what type of car. It's a boolean operation). I tried changing flights, and it yelled at me, telling me it couldn't calculate the new cost, so I was actually stuck with what I had previously. I tried changing cars, and that worked perfectly.

There's a ton of different icons and signs for things, but there are way too many words on all of these pages for me to want to read. The important details of the flight are nowhere near as pronounced as they should be , and as a total newcomer to any of this, I'm fairly certain I'm just clicking on things and not paying attention to what's going on.

It seems like Expedia has become so all-inclusive and complex they've lost the essence of what they should be. Their goal is to make reserving everything easier, but between a poorly executing system, and a poorly designed site, it's hard to know what's really going on with this site...

Now I have a headache...

Cheers,

-Brad

Expedia.com!

Expedia.com is fairly simple to use for booking flights along with hotel rooms. You can book flights to multiple destinations all at once, which I imagine would be good for someone who is traveling across Europe or the like. Being able to book hotels on the same site you book your flight also seems like it would simplify the whole travel-planning process. I for one have no exprience booking flights, as I live in Rochester and never need to book flights home.

A nice thing I noticed was that on the leftside of Expedia, during the booking process, there is a menu that allows you to swiftly change things like departing/arrival dates and times, airports in the area, airline, class and number of travelers. If you are booking a hotel, you can change the hotel dates from this menu, as well. I pretended to book a flight to Japan. Originally I had the hotel date set to be the same as my departure day, but because of the time-zone change, I needed to book the hotel arrival for the following day. Expedia indicated to me that the arrival day was "+1 day". I wanted to just change the hotel arrival date accordingly. At first I was not sure I could do so without going back to my original search, then I noticed the side menu allowed me to do so.

The side menu, however, does not allow you to completely change your starting point or destination. It only allows you to change which "near by" airport you'd like to depart from or arrive at. If you want to enter new daparture/arrival locations, you have to start a new search.

I also liked how when entering dates, Expedia pops up a little calendar from which you select a date. This makes it incredibly easy to enter dates. The text box for the date is still present, so you can opt to just type in the date, as well.

~Emily V.

A One-Way Street

As I explored Expedia.com I found many useful features.  I could compare options, check exchange rates, get package deals, and check ratings from people who had traveled to a particular hotel on a particular airline.  It was easy to find flights, hotels, cars, and combinations of the three based on price and dates.  The only missing combination seemed to be cruises and flights.  I went to book an Alaskan cruise that departed from Washington state, and had to go back to the beginning to book a flight to Washington separately.  The use of icons on the pages was really well done, but anything that didn't include an icon appeared to be hidden.  It was also possible to miss links since some information is only provided at certain stages of the process.  If you are booking a flight, there will be two opportunities to check associated baggage costs, and if you don't click on them when you first see them (provided you do see the small links amongst all the other text) you will miss your chance.  There is no "back" button to let you make changes or go click on a link that is no longer available.  The missing "back" button irritated me more than anything.  If you chose to compare two cruises side-by-side you had two options: check availability for A and check availability for B.  You didn't have the option of deciding neither one was what you really wanted.  You could press the back button on your browser unless you've already gotten past the login screen, in which case you could only go back to a certain point.  I think Expedia.com tries to do way too much and doesn't do anything exceptionally well.

-Robin Miller

I tried to book a flight...

Unfortunately, as helpful as Expedia.com is/can be, I feel it has many downfalls.  The first thing I noticed is the clutter.  I found that the site had a lot of buttons, highlighted words and choices.  These made the site overwhelming at times as well as difficult to navigate.  It also seemed that hidden in this mess were many of the important features.  The "button" to show more airlines is relatively small under the box that shows the first four or five choices.  Simple things that would be expected on either a side or bottom page navigation are also hidden.  I expected to find the baggage fees simply and instead had to click at least two or three things to find what I needed.  It was also simply a list of airlines, not customized based on what airline was chosen. 

The other two problems I found with this site had to do with price.  The initial search finds he lowest prices, but does not list these prices with taxes.  Thus, the flights are more expensive (usually by at least $20) when they are chosen.  A problem I also encountered was that that price of a flight changed after I selected it.  When I went back to make a new selection the price had not been updated. 

There was one simple factor on the site.  The dates for flights were very easy to choose.  When I clicked on a box to input dates it came up with a two-month calendar.  This helped me to pick a day of the month as well as day of the week.

~Marin


--
           ~MARIN KOBIN~
University of Rochester class of 2009

Red Box Assignment

Now I'm on my way to class.

-Andrew Keenan Richardson