One large frustration with the web is the "feature-creep" that occurs with many websites and web applications. You've experienced this situation - that charming industry-related news site you love so much begins to add social networking features, video/photo uploads, and instant messaging. The sad fact is that as your site loses focus through feature-creep, it becomes a me-too concept with no real point of differentiation. As Alan Cooper says in his bible on interaction design, "About Face 3.0," there are very few applications that can assume a sovereign position on the user's desktop. For the enterprise, the sovereign application of choice is Outlook. For tweens, teens, and young adults, it is Facebook. Unfortunately, many product teams fool themselves by thinking that the addition of more features will make their site the next sovereign application.
Which is why it is so refreshing to come across a web application that focuses on doing just a few things really, really well. Enter TripIt.com. TripIt is a travel management application that combines all of your air, car, and hotel itineraries into one easy-to-use itinerary. Without going through the complete explanation of how it works (they do that nicely through their tutorials), let me highlight few things they do very well:
- Email parsing: TripIt handles all forms of email-based itineraries, both plain text and HTML, from a plethora of air, car, hotel and travel agency sources. Regardless of whether it is an Orbitz-generated confirmation or something from Delta, TripIt's scripts will extract the correct information quickly. Anyone who has done a far share of traveling realizes that there is no consistency in the email confirmations from agencies and suppliers. TripIt handles the parsing with ease.
- Email transmission: From the time I sent an email confirmation notice to plans@tripit.com from my Yahoo!Mail account (on a slow DSL) to the time I received the "Your TripIt itinerary is ready...." response = 2 secs. That is quick! On the TripIt corporate blog, the founder discusses their maniacal focus on email transmission. They do all the right things such as actively lobbying the major ISPs to remain on their white lists.
- Behind the scenes registration: Registration is not required. While many sites put up a registration roadblock, a non-registered user can begin using TripIt simply by forwarding an email to plans@tripit.com. That's it. TripIt will autogen a user account tied to the originating email address.
- Lower the bar for initial engagement. Don't hammer people over the head with another cumbersome registration process. Provide a way to let prospects use some aspect of your service quickly. If you absolutely require some form of registration, make it a speed bump, not a road block, on the road to initial engagement.
- Execution is key part of experience design. Travelers will not wait for email latency. Aside from snazzy UIs and thoughtful IA, quick email transmissions are a key part of the user experience. TripIt's founders understand this and maintain a maniacal focus on email transmission.
- Focus on doing a few things really well. You will not go to TripIt to find travel news. Nor is it a replacement to Dopplr. Their focus is to solve the confounding mess of merging travel itineraries and displaying to your device of choice (laptop, smartphone, PDA).
