Re:Dear American Airlines...
by ScottWhigham on Monday May 18, 2009 @07:14AM
(#614772)
I like the redesign quite a bit but #### - the copy was just whiny. "Recently, I had the horrific displeasure of booking a flight on your website, aa.com. The experience disturbed me so deeply that I vowed never to fly your airline again." Not one single human reading that sentence believes it. And I can guess that most people reading it had the same thoughts I did: "Oh give me a break... {closes page}". I did close the page and came back to the comments here at HN trying to figure out what this was about. After reading a couple of comments, I re-opened and saw the re-design and liked it. But I did close the tab after reading that sentence lol.
I also laughed when I read, "Your website is abusive to your customers..." No, it isn't; that's just more drama/hyperbole. As someone else said, thousands and thousands of people use that website every day and, in case he isn't aware, that site design has been around for at least two years. I've used it countless times and, while it will win no awards for usability or design, I can accomplish what I need without resorting to cursing generally.
Dustin did a great redesign, then wrote the article seemingly based on the premise that he had built in credibility. What else explains the wall of self indulgent text, basically celebrating his victory over the AA designers before it's even been established? If I know who he is and I stopped reading, who in American Airlines is going to get to the bottom?
I don't know, maybe I overreacted, but I did tell the truth about closing the tab. I didn't make it to the redesign the first time I looked at the page, and the snarky remark wasn't to get points, it was more made out of disgust. If you look through my comment history, you'll probably see this is rare for me.