Hotwire launched in the Fall of 2000 - right before the economic downturn. Since then, the company survived two blows to the travel industry - September 11th and the Iraq War - to become a fairly successful discount travel site. I joined in April of 2001.

The Airlines

This decade has been tough for the airlines - from high fuel costs, to occupancy rates that swing from 50% to 80% - they haven't seen a break. We felt their pain - discounts from our suppliers went from 30% to 10% over the life of our company. We knew this kind of discount wasn't compelling enough for consumers, and the environment wasn't getting any better.

Solution

Aside from the tough business environment, we knew there was room for improvement in our air product. Previously - Hotwire sold one kind of air product - a fairly restrictive opaque product where the customer didn't know anything about the flight times. Consumer research confirmed the obvious - that a less opaque product would be more appealing to consumers and would probably sell better even at lower discounts. Once we had some supplier agreement, we began to rebuild our air product.

From the outset of the project, my main concern was about the growing complexity with the air product. We would be selling three different types of products, each with slightly different product features, each with their own restrictions. Yet each was an answer to a customers search for travel.

After mulling on the business objectives and a few user research data points, I formulated a few overarching UI goals. They were: 1) to answer the customers question, 2) help the customer understand the differences between our discount products and finally 3) show them our retail fares.

Selected work on the project

Skills

More work I did at Hotwire...