I used to work at Cheaptickets.com and Orbitz.com and one of the things I never liked was how complicated and "visually busy" their UI's were. Many times I envi

I used to work at Cheaptickets.com and Orbitz.com and one of the things I never liked was how complicated and "visually busy" their UI's were. Many times I envisioned in my mind what a better approach would look like. Hipmunk's UI is pretty much exactly what I wanted. Something super simple, just enough but not too much. No ads. No bullshit. No upselling or cross-selling. Solid colors. Less is more. Brilliant. I hope they stick with this style and philosophy. It's a powerful differentiator in a market which otherwise tends to be commodity-like, ugly and retarded in approach. Second but related point I wanted to make. I knew many of the in-house designers at both companies. I can confirm that the look/style/approach of those UI's is not their fault. They are salaried folks, working for The Man, and as with many large companies there's no single person who can put their foot down and say something is good/shit while also having the taste/skills to know what they're talking about. (Like a Steve Jobs at Apple.) A lot of the UI at major travel company websites is the result of "design by committee", by accretion, by slippery slope, by too much advertising, too much philosophy of "just one more thing" and trying to maximize the accounting value of each pixel of real estate. And yes, some of it is the result of A/B-testing and the Local Maxima anti-pattern.