UX Copy: forging travel UX from the early days
American Airlines – Quantum Leap; UX Copy, Advertising, Platform Email
American Airline’s 1998 site launch was a major event in the airline industry. It was perhaps the first fully modern, dynamically published airline reservations website, built on Broadvision technology – a platform that was still being written as our team at Quantum Leap worked. Most of the interface was published through Broadvision’s CMS, another innovation.
I was the lead copywriter, in charge of all user interface elements as well as email correspondence, ads and other customer-facing communications. After launch it was the most-trafficked airline website. American has constantly updated its technology platforms, so not a trace remains of that original site, but we proved what could be done with dynamic publishing engines in a super-high-volume online transactional system.
The traffic to our new site has been extraordinary. We apologize for any inconvenience as we continue to upgrade system capacity and improve response time.
andbook.com – 212Degrees; UX Copy, Internationalization lead, database harmonization, requirments gathering
andbook.com was a joint venture of Accor, Hilton International and Forté in 2000, gathering their hotel offerings in once place for easy booking. andbook was a massive trans-Atlantic undertaking, and one of the first sites to show hotels on a map. (You may have noticed the confusing non-capitalized name; I’m pretty sure they paid a branding agency a lot of money for that.)
For the 2001 launch of the partners’ combined booking website I was tasked with harmonizing the disparate worldwide hotel databases Accor, Hilton and Forté contributed, containing hundreds of properties. Not as a content strategist, mind you, or a data wrangler, because those job titles didn’t exist back then, but simply as a copywriter.
So, I did it. I surveyed their formats, came up with an XML-inspired data format for the comments round, worked through the details with corporate representatives during day-long working sessions in Nice, and got it done.
I was also the lead content and interface writer and internationalization lead; the site was localized into (British) English, French and German.
Welcome to andbook.com, where booking hotel accommodation is quick, convenient and reliable. The hotel of your choice is just a few steps away!