If you weren’t paying attention to poss tagged #UX on twitter over the past few days, you probably missed the conversations/hullabaloo regarding the American Airlines’ website. So, I’ll recap here: an independent designer. Dustin Curtis, was frustrated by the web design that American Airlines (AA) had. On his own time, with no aspirations that his design would ever be applied, he created his own UI screen designs.
After posting a link to his designs on Twitter, a huge number of people responded to it, in a positive way – and compained about the existing design. Many who responded said that they actually worked for AA, were embarrassed by the site, and loved Curtis’ ideas. Eventually, the UX Architect for AA wrote a long and heartfelt letter to Curtis explaining all the constraints he was under, due to the many different stakeholders who had ownership of “chunks” of the UI.
Thousands of people joined in the conversation, praising Curtis’ work and complaining about the existing website. The official response, from American Airlines?
“Thanks for your feedback.”
To me, this is the very definition of a lost opportunity. You have thousands of people who are giving you feedback – for FREE – through a social network, and you say “thanks for your feedback?” Who with the what now?
What should have American Airlines done? Well, something similar to what the CEO of Dominoes did a couple of months back when a viral video was posted of Dominoes (now ex-) employees doing… inappropriate things doing food preparation. The Dominoes CEO posted a youtube response almost immediately, reinforcing that the scandalous video did NOT reflect the standards of the company and that the people in the video were no longer working for the chain. A potentially very damaging hit to the Dominos brand was squashed, almost immediately.
Obviously, a major company can’t go “Yeah, our online experience sucks… can we have a do-over?” In my opinion, what they SHOULD have done was, publicly and dramatically, responded to the designer, stating they would like to get more of his ideas… and ask if he was available to consult on the site design (and be paid for the privilege). This shows that the company “gets it” – that design MATTERS. Even if Curtis only gets a free visit to the corporate HQ (which should cost the company, oh, NOTHING, since they run an airline), it would go a long way to make anyone paying attention to this think that American Airlines… oh, I don’t know, listens to their customers? Cares?
It’s a better response than what actually happened, which was… corporate apathy.
I urge everyone to listen to this episode of Net@Nite that has an interview with Dustin Curtis and, if you work for a company that has an on-line presence, PLEASE… learn from this. Your company’s brand – and experience – is not the sole property of the CEO and shareholders. These days, the brand is a reflection of the user experience your company provides – and the feedback loop, thanks to the Internet and social networks, is now a very public one.
Be ready.
