Jeff Beckham

I’ve come across two instances in the last two days that use the airline industry as an illustration for what to avoid in online media and web design. It’s no great stretch to say that the airline industry has its problems, but I found it interesting that two respected folks used the same example in the same week.

1. First was Jeffrey Veen, design manager at Google and one of the founding partners of Adaptive Path. Jeff writes that the airlines are rapidly redesigning their websites in an attempt to hold on to fleeing customers. But as he points out, airline web sites are complex and confusing because the way airlines do business is complex. “Good design,” says Jeff, “can’t fix broken business models.”
2. Then came Malcolm Gladwell, who, speaking as part of an “Online Media and the Future of Journalism” panel, compared the problems facing the airline industry to those facing the newspaper industry. Companies connected with flying — resorts, plane manufacturers, pilots — make money while the airlines themselves struggle. “This is the newspaper business,” Gladwell said. “Without the New York Times, there is no blog community. They’d have nothing to blog about. … So the solution to the problem is not to say ‘I guess newspapers are dead,’ because the whole system crashes down. … Airlines have got to be a bit better at pricing their services, and so should newspapers.”