4 ms·

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 iteratin

by 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!
- lucaspiller 14y ago
  > when I search for flights, I find that I am looking for something very specific. I know cites and dates, direct flights only I'm pretty much the same if I'm going on holiday - I usually chose an exact city well before looking for flights rather than a country or an area. If I'm flying back to my parents though, it's a bit different. There are a number of airports around them: - one has flights daily but requires a 3 hour train journey - another has flights twice a week and is a 1 hour drive - another has flights daily, is a 1 hour drive, but is usually more than twice the price of the others - another has flights daily, is a 2 hour drive, and the price varies For this I usually just open SkyScanner (Adioso doesn't seem to have many low cost airlines in Europe) in 10 tabs or so and compare the results myself...
  - heymishy 14y ago
    That might be the case for you both, but I certainly have a use case for this style of searching. I often want to go on a break over a set weekend/week with no set destination in mind, and very flexible with dates. This type of things is perfect for when your not explicitly looking for a specific date range or flight path.. more just experimenting with options. Hats off to you guys, like the semantic query style rather than the traditional mould!
    - brianpan 14y ago
      Absolutely agree that there is a use case for the open-ended search- it's powerful, cool, and not yet addressed by anyone. My point is that the "traditional" search also has it's strengths, especially when the trip is not going to be open-ended: travelling to a wedding or graduation, travelling for business, travelling with a group of friends where the schedule and destination is agreed upon. In fact, thinking about it more, I strongly suspect that personality (in a Myers-Briggs J/P way) has a lot to do with how we prefer to travel. Some people plan everything out ahead of time down to the hour, some people close their eyes and spin the globe. I think the other factor is how often you fly. If you don't travel/vacation very often, you are more likely to be travelling for a specific reason where dates and destination is known. If you travel very often, you will probably have more opportunities to pick a random place to go for the weekend.

by wernah 14y ago

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!

lucaspiller 14y ago
> when I search for flights, I find that I am looking for something very specific. I know cites and dates, direct flights only I'm pretty much the same if I'm going on holiday - I usually chose an exact city well before looking for flights rather than a country or an area. If I'm flying back to my parents though, it's a bit different. There are a number of airports around them: - one has flights daily but requires a 3 hour train journey - another has flights twice a week and is a 1 hour drive - another has flights daily, is a 1 hour drive, but is usually more than twice the price of the others - another has flights daily, is a 2 hour drive, and the price varies For this I usually just open SkyScanner (Adioso doesn't seem to have many low cost airlines in Europe) in 10 tabs or so and compare the results myself...
- heymishy 14y ago
  That might be the case for you both, but I certainly have a use case for this style of searching. I often want to go on a break over a set weekend/week with no set destination in mind, and very flexible with dates. This type of things is perfect for when your not explicitly looking for a specific date range or flight path.. more just experimenting with options. Hats off to you guys, like the semantic query style rather than the traditional mould!
  - brianpan 14y ago
    Absolutely agree that there is a use case for the open-ended search- it's powerful, cool, and not yet addressed by anyone. My point is that the "traditional" search also has it's strengths, especially when the trip is not going to be open-ended: travelling to a wedding or graduation, travelling for business, travelling with a group of friends where the schedule and destination is agreed upon. In fact, thinking about it more, I strongly suspect that personality (in a Myers-Briggs J/P way) has a lot to do with how we prefer to travel. Some people plan everything out ahead of time down to the hour, some people close their eyes and spin the globe. I think the other factor is how often you fly. If you don't travel/vacation very often, you are more likely to be travelling for a specific reason where dates and destination is known. If you travel very often, you will probably have more opportunities to pick a random place to go for the weekend.