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The site looks beautiful, and the UI for the search results is really flexible & powerful. Just a fantastic job. But the search box, it requires educating the

by Sakes 14y ago

The site looks beautiful, and the UI for the search results is really flexible & powerful. Just a fantastic job. But the search box, it requires educating the user, and this is your initial and most important functionality on your site. The funny thing is, you allow your user to type in the search as if they are speaking to a person which is a great idea and obviously the way it should be, but that is not how users have been trained to interact with random websites. I am sure you are aware of this, I am sure the search box is very important to you, but I think you should revisit the search box and homepage. Here are some ideas, feel free to love them, hate them, praise them, trash them. I hope they are good and if not I hope they give you some new ideas. * Home page - plain white & bare, logo centered, add airplane or luggage to logo so you don't need to describe what you are offering, text "Where do you want to go?", text box, and nothing else. (Format it like google and people will be more inclined to use it like google) * Automatically figure out where they are coming from. Google analytics knows already, so I am sure there is some way to grab that info. Assume this is their starting point until they tell you otherwise. It currently is defaulting to LA. * The first question anyone answers when traveling somewhere is "Where", thus the only text on your page asks, "Where do you want to go?". * As the user types in his destination / search, the website immediately responds informatively and aesthetically. * Once you have matched a destination, the background of the page changes to a beautiful image of that location, the vacation doesn't start once you get off the plane, it starts now. Going from plain white bkgd to a destination image bkgd ideally will slowly start to pull your user into a vacation mind set. * Once you have matched a destination, the text on the homepage changes from "Where do you want to go?" to "When? You could type next week, or 03/22". * If the user deleted the destination before entering "When", repopulate the input field with both the destination and when they want to travel text, he will now understand that you just keep entering information into the field as if you are talking to a person, or searching on google. * Once you have matched when, introduce new imagery of activities you can do there and/or native food dishes. You are continuing the theme of providing your user with an vacation experience now, not later. * Once you have matched when, the text on the homepage changes from "When? You could type next week, or 03/22" to "For how long? You could type a few days, or a weekend" * After you have all needed search data, proceed to results, and if possible continue vacation now theme * The search box should still work as originally intended as well. Keep up the good fight, don't let them leave the home page without thinking "This is cool!", and I would love to one day hear people say "I need to adioso!"

Anonymous09 14y ago
I disagree. Stick with typical input boxes. Go to Kayak.com. Type 2 or 3 letters and you find the airport you're looking for in the search box. It's less typing than the Adioso search, and you know the input is correct. The first search I did on Adioso picked the wrong city and date range, even though I was quite specific. Also, images of the location and food are completely unnecessary. People want to find the best flight, at the cheapest price, and that's it. Unless you're trying to sell vacation packages, you're just losing focus.
wernah 14y ago
Hello, I'm the designer behind the homepage and search box. Thanks for the great feedback! As you could have guessed, there's been a lot of thought and iterating over the homepage and the orange search box, both on a functional level and a branding experience. It's been a really interesting exercise. Searching (at least from a Web interface POV) is a really robust paradigm and a space that is challenging to innovate in. While I agree that we haven't quite 'nailed it', I feel like we're constantly moving towards the promised land while adhering to the plethora of backend and frontend contraints. I like your idea from a story telling perspective, but it feels a little step heavy. We're trying to be patient in educating users on the breadth of queries we can handle. Understanding what you could put into the Google search box was a very gradual discovery experience. I too am hoping we can turn a proper noun into a verb :)
- brianpan 14y ago
  Here's my take on the search box- I'm a parent flying with a young child, and I just finished booking flights last week. While the capabilities of the open-ended design of the search is amazing, when I search for flights, I find that I am looking for something very specific. I know cites and dates, direct flights only. Even before getting married and having a kid, I generally think about where and when I want to travel well before I start searching online. I don't know if other people are more spontaneous than I am, but I am constrained by PTO days, other people's schedules, etc. At the most I want the flexibility to change the leave/return dates by a day or two. Since I already know the parameters of my trip, I find that the input that most travel sites have settled on (To, From, Include nearby airports, Leave date, Return date) gets me to what I'm looking for faster. The open-endedness of the Adioso search box was actually slower, since I tended to type too little and did a lot of filtering afterwards. It felt like my choices are either I type too much and the computer doesn't understand, or I type too little and "fix it myself". From my biased perspective, I think it would be a big win to have the traditional search inputs be the default but with the open-ended search as an alternative input (not "Advanced search" but maybe the link is "I'm flexible"). As an alternative search, it's no longer a limiting search but it now feels like: you can type anything and the computer just figures it out! Sweet! Also, user education no longer is a problem- everyone knows what to do with an "I'm flexible" search box. The other big speed advantage of the traditional search input is: often I will return to a travel site weeks later and my trip details are already pre-filled and all I need to do is hit the search button. You can't really do that with a search box. (When I hit back from the Adioso search results page, I lose everything and the search box is empty. That seems like a bug, I think I should be able to save at least that little bit of typing.) BTW, I didn't feel like Adioso search (getting back the initial results) was slow at all. It felt just as fast as any other travel site and definitely faster than the worst of them that leave you staring at airplane animations for 10s of seconds. Great work, I'm really interested to see what happens with Adioso. I'll definitely be trying it more in the future!

by Sakes 14y ago

Anonymous09 14y ago

I disagree. Stick with typical input boxes. Go to Kayak.com. Type 2 or 3 letters and you find the airport you're looking for in the search box. It's less typing than the Adioso search, and you know the input is correct. The first search I did on Adioso picked the wrong city and date range, even though I was quite specific. Also, images of the location and food are completely unnecessary. People want to find the best flight, at the cheapest price, and that's it. Unless you're trying to sell vacation packages, you're just losing focus.

wernah 14y ago

Hello, I'm the designer behind the homepage and search box. Thanks for the great feedback! As you could have guessed, there's been a lot of thought and iterating over the homepage and the orange search box, both on a functional level and a branding experience. It's been a really interesting exercise. Searching (at least from a Web interface POV) is a really robust paradigm and a space that is challenging to innovate in. While I agree that we haven't quite 'nailed it', I feel like we're constantly moving towards the promised land while adhering to the plethora of backend and frontend contraints. I like your idea from a story telling perspective, but it feels a little step heavy. We're trying to be patient in educating users on the breadth of queries we can handle. Understanding what you could put into the Google search box was a very gradual discovery experience. I too am hoping we can turn a proper noun into a verb :)

brianpan 14y ago
Here's my take on the search box- I'm a parent flying with a young child, and I just finished booking flights last week. While the capabilities of the open-ended design of the search is amazing, when I search for flights, I find that I am looking for something very specific. I know cites and dates, direct flights only. Even before getting married and having a kid, I generally think about where and when I want to travel well before I start searching online. I don't know if other people are more spontaneous than I am, but I am constrained by PTO days, other people's schedules, etc. At the most I want the flexibility to change the leave/return dates by a day or two. Since I already know the parameters of my trip, I find that the input that most travel sites have settled on (To, From, Include nearby airports, Leave date, Return date) gets me to what I'm looking for faster. The open-endedness of the Adioso search box was actually slower, since I tended to type too little and did a lot of filtering afterwards. It felt like my choices are either I type too much and the computer doesn't understand, or I type too little and "fix it myself". From my biased perspective, I think it would be a big win to have the traditional search inputs be the default but with the open-ended search as an alternative input (not "Advanced search" but maybe the link is "I'm flexible"). As an alternative search, it's no longer a limiting search but it now feels like: you can type anything and the computer just figures it out! Sweet! Also, user education no longer is a problem- everyone knows what to do with an "I'm flexible" search box. The other big speed advantage of the traditional search input is: often I will return to a travel site weeks later and my trip details are already pre-filled and all I need to do is hit the search button. You can't really do that with a search box. (When I hit back from the Adioso search results page, I lose everything and the search box is empty. That seems like a bug, I think I should be able to save at least that little bit of typing.) BTW, I didn't feel like Adioso search (getting back the initial results) was slow at all. It felt just as fast as any other travel site and definitely faster than the worst of them that leave you staring at airplane animations for 10s of seconds. Great work, I'm really interested to see what happens with Adioso. I'll definitely be trying it more in the future!