4 ms·

This is super slick. Design wise it's ahead of its game, instead of another flat design website. I love how they put "life" into their brand with those avatars

This is super slick. Design wise it's ahead of its game, instead of another flat design website. I love how they put "life" into their brand with those avatars and make it fun in this all too boring process of buying tickets. To be honest, I would be jealous of how innovative Virgin is lately when I'm another airline. UX wise there are some things I would do differently. There are some rough edges but it's an iterative process and they'll probably track tons of things now. For example, changing prior steps will reset the date selection. Deep respect for their team, I also love their new logo. Awesome!

User9812 12y ago
Well, I give them respect for trying something new. It has some improvements, but the UX falls short in others. 1. Boarding pass is great. 2. Being able to scroll back up to make changes is wonderful. A lot of airline sites are slow, your session breaks when you use the back button, etc. It's nice being able to scroll up, change a date, scroll back down. Well done. As for the downside, it uses way too much space. This might work on a tablet or touch screen, but it's awful for the desktop. For example, your typical airline uses something like this... http://i.imgur.com/bEjWWm0.png http://i.imgur.com/bEjWWm0.png A couple of autocomplete boxes, and a calendar picker that pops up. Works fine, it's all visible in a little box, and easy to use. The virgin site stretches this across a handful of pages, or if you're picking further off dates, it might be 10+ pages. That's just bad design. What they should do is keep a more traditional method of selecting all your airports and dates, then scroll down to the prices when you click continue. I think it would be the best of both worlds. They also need a method of finding the best price over a given time period. Jetstar is one of my favorites when it comes to this... http://booknow.jetstar.com/Search.aspx http://booknow.jetstar.com/Search.aspx Pick a flight, say Brisbane to Sydney for a few weeks in June. Click the box to say you want the lowest price. It gives you a nice little graph with all the cheapest flights highlighted, so you can easily choose your days. Actually, the whole Jetstar booking process is decent, and I used it often in Australia.
80 12y ago
>Design wise it's ahead of its game, instead of another flat design website. Huh - did we look at the same site? Just the same old minimal bootstrap3core aesthetic that's everywhere nowadays. Found it pleasant to use, though.
- jasonwen 12y ago
  With most flat design sites I have the feeling I've seen them before. With the new Virgin site I don't have this feeling. Although it didn't work for you haha. Most flat design websites currently all use the same flat colors and the Flat UI template. Flat design websites that are created by excellent designers begin to use gradients with specific color combinations. Like Stripe. There's also an ongoing trend by using more thin fonts and thin graphs in charts. Looks more elegant. I really like this, but UX wise I hear a lot of signals that people find it hard to read.
foobarian 12y ago
I can't stand the fonts. Why is it necessary to make the letters on a 120px font what feels like 1 pixel wide :( I can barely make out the characters at all.
- hiphopyo 12y ago
  Could you upload an alternative mockup?

User9812 12y ago

Well, I give them respect for trying something new. It has some improvements, but the UX falls short in others. 1. Boarding pass is great. 2. Being able to scroll back up to make changes is wonderful. A lot of airline sites are slow, your session breaks when you use the back button, etc. It's nice being able to scroll up, change a date, scroll back down. Well done. As for the downside, it uses way too much space. This might work on a tablet or touch screen, but it's awful for the desktop. For example, your typical airline uses something like this... http://i.imgur.com/bEjWWm0.png http://i.imgur.com/bEjWWm0.png A couple of autocomplete boxes, and a calendar picker that pops up. Works fine, it's all visible in a little box, and easy to use. The virgin site stretches this across a handful of pages, or if you're picking further off dates, it might be 10+ pages. That's just bad design. What they should do is keep a more traditional method of selecting all your airports and dates, then scroll down to the prices when you click continue. I think it would be the best of both worlds. They also need a method of finding the best price over a given time period. Jetstar is one of my favorites when it comes to this... http://booknow.jetstar.com/Search.aspx http://booknow.jetstar.com/Search.aspx Pick a flight, say Brisbane to Sydney for a few weeks in June. Click the box to say you want the lowest price. It gives you a nice little graph with all the cheapest flights highlighted, so you can easily choose your days. Actually, the whole Jetstar booking process is decent, and I used it often in Australia.

80 12y ago

>Design wise it's ahead of its game, instead of another flat design website. Huh - did we look at the same site? Just the same old minimal bootstrap3core aesthetic that's everywhere nowadays. Found it pleasant to use, though.

jasonwen 12y ago
With most flat design sites I have the feeling I've seen them before. With the new Virgin site I don't have this feeling. Although it didn't work for you haha. Most flat design websites currently all use the same flat colors and the Flat UI template. Flat design websites that are created by excellent designers begin to use gradients with specific color combinations. Like Stripe. There's also an ongoing trend by using more thin fonts and thin graphs in charts. Looks more elegant. I really like this, but UX wise I hear a lot of signals that people find it hard to read.

foobarian 12y ago

I can't stand the fonts. Why is it necessary to make the letters on a 120px font what feels like 1 pixel wide :( I can barely make out the characters at all.

hiphopyo 12y ago
Could you upload an alternative mockup?