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- Responsive homepage redesign at Expedia
- Today Moms site responsive design
- Responsive design at msnbc.com
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This was my first and last project at Expedia and I am so glad it finally launched. This is the first time that a company of this size tries to do responsive design.
I was lucky to join at the right moment when the design team was still in the early stage of exploring homepage redesign. I joined as a principle lead managing the team responsible for the homepage and landing pages in August 2012. At that time the design team were A/B testing a few different homepage concepts. One of the main challenges we faced was convincing the leadership that we had to change the homepage. Since it had not been significantly changed for years and people don't like big changes, every time we tried something drastic, it affected the bottom line. It took awhile, but my team came up with a concept that got the company excited.
After a long process of negotiation, we decided that we would go ahead and completely redesign the homepage and launch it in beta mode. We wanted to let people opt-in instead of force them into the new design. That way we could get enough traffic to test what's working without affecting the bottom line too much. We got buyoff from the leadership team and we started the planning process.
NOTE: _To opt-in, go to expedia.com and click on the Show Me button below the header. Make sure you leave some feedback._
It took us awhile to revamp the search wizard, since it is the most important piece of functionality on the page. After a lot of user lab studies and A/B tests, we came up with a model that worked. I am particularly proud of the ability for users to organically build packages from any line of business. For example, you can start out booking a flight and add a hotel and a car to your search. It felt really intuitive.
Another thing that I love about the search form is that it works on desktop and tablets. The reason we didn't make it work for mobile was that the mobile platform is owned by a separate organization within Expedia. But technically it is not out of reach.
The main story behind the new design is around the idea that travel is supposed to be personal, fun and easy. So we wanted to make sure that the new design conveyed that. We simplified the form and made it much more accessible on touch devices. We used a huge hero image that we hoped would get users into the right mood. We made sure that we remembered you when you come back. Although not all of the ideas have been implemented, it does show where we want to go. I feel like the company is going in the right direction and it has the right kind of people to be successful.
Some of you may wonder why I left if things were going well. I was approached by a late stage startup that promised to let me revamp the product from scratch. It is something that I have always wanted to do, so I went for it. I am very glad though that I had a chance to leave my mark at Expedia and can now finally see it go live.
DESKTOP VERSION
TABLET VERSION





Related posts:
* Today Moms site responsive design
* Responsive design at msnbc.com
* Msnbc.com new mobile site: design for modularity
I am so excited that the redesigned Today Moms site launched. It was the last project I worked on when I was still at nbcnews.com. With a small team of super talented people we came up with this responsive design concept.
The site is built on the new platform that we built in early 2012. There are a few great ideas behind this concept, and I want to highlight a couple that makes me smile
.
DESKTOP HOMEPAGE
One of the biggest problems we are trying to solve has to do with reading behavior that most people have. Readers will come to the an article on the site, read it and leave. We want people to continue reading, and to do so, we have to streamline the reading experience and make it as effortless as possible. We do that on desktop by automatically open the next article when you reach the end of the current one. Infinite scroll has been implemented on many social web sites, but the technique is not being used for news sites. It is a great solution that help build a certain kind of user habits. It is something that behavioral psychologists call Variable Reward Schedule.
To streamline the reading experience even further, the team negotiated with the advertising team to move all ads to the third column on desktop experience. We place a new ad after every 5-7 paragraphs. And it is only being loaded when it is visible on screen. It is a patented technology owned by the company. That way the content integrity is intact and the advertisers are still getting their impressions.
Last but not least important is the social sharing bar on the left side that follows the user down the page. It has been done on other sites, but the colorful bar in this case stands out enough from the rest of the page without being obnoxious. And it tested really well in our usability lab.
So there it is, my last project at nbcnews.com. I am sad that I was not there to celebrate the launch with the team. Kudos to all the people that are involved. You guys are awesome!
DESKTOP STORY PAGE
TABLET HOMEPAGE
TABLET STORY PAGE
PHONE HOMEPAGE
PHONE STORY PAGE








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* Responsive design at msnbc.com
* Msnbc.com new mobile site: design for modularity
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* The work behind msnbc.com election maps
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I haven't been very active lately mostly due to an incurable desease called laziness
. I know I shouldn't be making excuses, but I do have a few other reasons. I am happy to say that I now am a proud father to a super cute 3-month-old boy. His name is Adrian and I look forward to teaching him some mad programming skills.
Yep, it all happened rather quickly. When I stopped posting in late 2010, my girlfriend and I were planning our wedding. After the wedding she immediately got pregnant. I swear I didn't do it on purpose
. Since then, life have been pretty hectic for me as I had to stop being a baby and grow up was preparing to be a father. In the mid of all that, I got promoted to lead the mobile and devices team at msnbc.com. Apparently if you are good enough to be a father, you are also good enough to tell other people what to do
.
So during the last 18 months, I learned a lot about designing for touch devices. We started using ASP.NET MVC for our new publishing platform at work, so I got to learn a lot of C# as well. In early 2011 with a friend and my wife, we built a prototype for our own web startup. It was a recommendation engine for people who enjoy good food. Although we never finished the project, I have grown a lot as a developer.
So, that's pretty much it. As things are coming back to normal, I will try to stay more active. I will even try to write some tutorials again. 




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