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> the difficulty in balancing usability/simplicity with flexibility/customizability Not sure what the OP had in mind, but my current favorite example is Expedi

by runako 3y ago

> the difficulty in balancing usability/simplicity with flexibility/customizability Not sure what the OP had in mind, but my current favorite example is Expedia. I have used Expedia consistently for over 15 years. Have bought many flights for the family etc. over the years. They know who I travel with. Yet if I open Expedia now to book a flight, I will have to enter the ages of my kids again, as if Expedia didn't know their birthdays. Apparently it is difficult to get the balance correct.

dustyleary 3y ago
It's not a question about difficulty, it's that nobody really gives a shit. I'm sure everyone on this site knows that it would not be difficult at all to implement this. Perhaps there is some valid legal concern over remembering minors' data, but if so, you can pretty easily come up with another dozen examples of sites elsewhere having similar issues with non-sensitive data. The problem is that you usually have to have someone who is actually passionate about the product to drive all these little things home. Maybe this was a bug that was the next item on their backlog, but then someone in the chain of command said "it's good enough now, ship it.", and then everyone got moved on to the next thing. Almost everyone at most companies, at all levels, is just doing a job. Very few people actually care about the product.
- abecedarius 3y ago
  Was the patent technically nonobvious? The concerns in this seem to be saying it can be hard to overcome organizational and legacy friction instead, as far as I can tell. I never heard of anything nonobvious at the time either.
amadeuspagel 3y ago
Should storing people's ages also be patentable?
- runako 3y ago
  To the extent that business models are patentable, maybe so? We're 25+ years into online travel, and nobody has implemented it. Maybe it's one of those things that looks simple but isn't? For technical difficulty, it's certainly no less difficult than storing credit card details for reuse, and that passed muster at the PTO. All that said, I am excited to see what's (hopefully?) coming. A travel site should be able to intuit what kind of trip I'm planning, or ask me if it's not obvious. If I do a search for a city that I fly to every other week, perhaps it's okay to just go ahead and sort to the top the same flights and hotel I used last time. If the flight is in the summer and to a popular vacation area, perhaps guess that my family will also be traveling. These things have all been technically possible for decades, but we don't see them in the wild. Maybe they are less obvious or more difficult than they appear from the outside (I have never built a travel agent).

by runako 3y ago

dustyleary 3y ago

It's not a question about difficulty, it's that nobody really gives a shit. I'm sure everyone on this site knows that it would not be difficult at all to implement this. Perhaps there is some valid legal concern over remembering minors' data, but if so, you can pretty easily come up with another dozen examples of sites elsewhere having similar issues with non-sensitive data. The problem is that you usually have to have someone who is actually passionate about the product to drive all these little things home. Maybe this was a bug that was the next item on their backlog, but then someone in the chain of command said "it's good enough now, ship it.", and then everyone got moved on to the next thing. Almost everyone at most companies, at all levels, is just doing a job. Very few people actually care about the product.

abecedarius 3y ago
Was the patent technically nonobvious? The concerns in this seem to be saying it can be hard to overcome organizational and legacy friction instead, as far as I can tell. I never heard of anything nonobvious at the time either.

amadeuspagel 3y ago

Should storing people's ages also be patentable?

runako 3y ago
To the extent that business models are patentable, maybe so? We're 25+ years into online travel, and nobody has implemented it. Maybe it's one of those things that looks simple but isn't? For technical difficulty, it's certainly no less difficult than storing credit card details for reuse, and that passed muster at the PTO. All that said, I am excited to see what's (hopefully?) coming. A travel site should be able to intuit what kind of trip I'm planning, or ask me if it's not obvious. If I do a search for a city that I fly to every other week, perhaps it's okay to just go ahead and sort to the top the same flights and hotel I used last time. If the flight is in the summer and to a popular vacation area, perhaps guess that my family will also be traveling. These things have all been technically possible for decades, but we don't see them in the wild. Maybe they are less obvious or more difficult than they appear from the outside (I have never built a travel agent).