Disclosure: I'm a designer, programmer and have worked at large global ad agencies and small web production houses on projects with scale similar to this.

I'm on AA's side on this one.

Yes, Curtis' design is prettier - much prettier.

But better? In what sense? Is the purpose of the AA site to look pretty or is it to drive sales of airline tickets?

It seems that all this design succeeds in doing is getting rid of visual clutter. I think it's pretty arrogant of any designer to assume that the "better" design is one where the designer simply removes stuff they deem unimportant, ignoring any business parameters the company might have. Curtis doesn't have any of the metrics associated with this site at his disposal, so his design is tantamount to an hour's worth of attractive guesswork. When you're talking about a sales platform at a corporation as large as this, metrics and numbers are always going to trump some designer's "hunch", whichever way you dice it.

As a possible example - removing the "Featuring" banner ads and the "Fare Sale Alerts" sections is all fine and dandy when you want to fit your design around some requirements that you conjoured out of nowhere, but you'd probably hit a brick wall *fast* working with a client like this when they tell you that those ugly little banners and alerts are "actually driving sales, Mr Curtis". You'll need to show that your minimalist approach is going to earn them more money ("oohs" and "aahs" from appreciative fellow designers don't translate so well into revenue for AA) than their current approach which caters for various types of end user - people looking for a cheap deal, people looking to maximise air miles - as opposed to Curtis' approach which is really only appropriate for one type of end user; the kind who just wants a ticket.

In summary: no offence to Curtis, but this is just design masturbation - nobody can really make any kind of informed decision about a huge overhaul like this without communicating with various business departments and doing an absolute *boatload* of testing.

Curtis' design could happily be adopted for a less entrenched player though - think small regional carriers whose margin for error regarding web sales is much lower.

I will give Curtis some credit though - he has probably started a conversation over at AA, and that's better than nothing :)

oh dear god, Fastcompany, please allow line-breaks in your comments from now on...

Sorry for the interruption. But I had to make an account on fast company just to make a comment.

First of all both of you are ranting about the design and programming experience.

And just want to let you know. I am a designer also. But I have no degree or experience, I do no web pages or program databases or stuff like that. I am an engineering student and I think I have an eye for design or just have akward gut feelings when I see something not lined up properly or seeing two colors that just dont match.

Design is driven by passion and not hunches. Also by deep gut feelings. Those feelings are made up of what your surroundings tell you and what your mentors and school has taught you. I do agree that a site has to be catered by type of user as jon cockle points out" people looking for a cheap deal, people looking to maximise air miles." AND The three of you make very good points: Curtis, Jon, and MR.X. BUT Dont diss saying its design masturbation, that doing a web page redesign is a piece of cake.... So MR. jon instead of just being green-eyed over the design Mr. Curtis made in less than an hour. Why dont you take an hour to build on top of that and help structure it. Since I DO know about programming, I would say: Get a better search algorithm, so when my mother needs to get a hold of AA's office in the middle on nowhere I can find it in less than 3 clicks. Bottom line I think Designers should stick to designing programmers to programming... and let everyone do something passionate about it. MR curtis I am on your side. Ill bring the better search algorithm. Ohh and by the way when I saw this page 2 things came to my mind on one side (MSN.COM - with to much eye candy) and the other (Yahoo - with sweet and low; and Google - sugar free).

A really good site is a magical mix of design and functionality. They can't exist without the other. However, the plight of the corporate web developer is much like Mr. X describes. We want to stretch out and build the next killer web app with all the bells and whistles, but at the same time our work has to have a valid business reason and fit into various constraints. While I don't particularly like the look of the AA.com site, as a corporate web developer, I can understand Mr. X's position entirely.

Being a usual voyeur to digg posts, I had to sign up as well to comment on this. I'm a graphic designer and had the need to post this link for the IcelandAir website ( http://www.icelandair.us/ ). I'm sure there are many well designed airline websites out there and just as many poorly designed sites.

I do agree what the designer for AA has said. Straight up Corporate Bloat. Which, using IcelandAir as an example of contrast, is a really tight knit company with a vision. Much like say, Apple. Different organizations work different ways but ultimately, you make things simple, no matter how many services you offer, and you'll yield better results.
clear.
concise.
to the point.
easy to find.
and with that said, no matter what American Airlines want to have on their front page that's accessible to every type of person, it is not very effective. It's not the designers fault--but the company.

@JohnCrocke, Apple manages to have a compelling clutter free website and still make a ton of sales. I think the mistake at corporations is this overwhelming desire to present everything on one page and get it above the scroll line. That's been my experience anyway.

I am going to provide the flip side of this argument. I work for a large company that designs systems of which, interface design (which is essentially what we're talking about here) is merely a subset.

As companies get larger, it is very difficult to be successful without formal processes and bureaucracy. Why? When you are writing a program for yourself, you pretty much know what you want so requirements documents are a waste of time. But if you are working on a project in which LOTS of people have a vested interest, you can't just trust EVERYONE to make decisions on their own because they will often be in conflict. By having formal decision processes and reviews, you are ensuring (or trying to at least) a level of quality between groups.

While there is sure to be lots of waste that could be trimmed with the AA design processes to allow for more Agile design, you won't be able to transform it to being as fast and as flexible as a small company.

Oh I so feel the pain of the AA.com designer. I ran a web applications team for very large company that had sites all over the world. Once everyone in the company has their say about a redesign you end up with a mess. The design looks nothing like it should and the usability diminishes greatly. There has got to be a better way. Getting requirements from everyone involved on the front end is smart. Performing usability testing with Customers not internal stake holders is key as well. I am so glad he responded.

I am really kind of surprised at some of reactions to my letter. American Airlines is big. It has a lot of inertia. It also has a lot of "stakeholders" who want their fingers in the design of the website. But none of that matters. When you are in a consumer facing business, all of that bureaucratic crap is secondary to your customer experience. If you lean on it as rationalization for your shortcomings, you have a serious cultural problem that goes far beyond just bad design.

This is true especially when you're an airline and your customer experience is the sole differentiator of your product. The problem is not that AA.com is a horrid monstrosity (which it is), the problem is that the management of AA.com, and really of the entire customer experience at AA, is flawed. There are only two possible explanations for how an experience can get this bad. Either the designers aren't good enough to develop the brand or the business is not focused enough to create a concise brand promise. There is absolutely no focus on AA.com.

To see a company that does this right, look at Skype. They care so deeply about their brand that they built this amazing book for internal use: http://blog.dustincurtis.com/the-skype-brand-book . Can you even imagine such a thing for AA?

John Crocke, I've always been a fan of your sites because they are beautiful and simple. Your response here kind of surprises me. When I did my redesign, I spent literally two hours on it, and I was focusing on the "I want a pony!" possibility and ignoring the "stakeholder requirements". Obviously, if a site like AA.com was to be properly redesigned, it would require a massive effort and a huge amount of market/user testing. But the problem isn't just design; the business at AA is not focused enough to laser-target a specific type of user experience. And that's where the real problem lies, I think.

Big companies don't have to have such worthless design, Jon Cockle. Layer upon layer of stakeholders and management or not.

It would be excusable if it were functional, but it is not. The calls to action are obscured. The buttons are teeny tiny. It fails the Squint Test.

Just because some big companies have such a convoluted design process doesn't make it right, or inevitable, or necessary, or useful.

I did great work on (internal) projects at Bear Stearns, for example. They may have had problems with their quants and leveraging, but they were able to have small internal teams who -- guess what -- were trusted to get feedback from real users as to requirements, test, and iterate on designs. As a result, we broke serious ground on a tool that made people happy. Win/win. AA is lose/lose.

"Your Web site is abusive to your customers..."

I started flying with American Airlines in the late '80. For the next decade or more, American was my hands down favorite Airline to do business with, primarily because, as both a business and personal traveler, American always provided a first rate customer experience at every touch point.

But over the past several years, that experience has deteriorated (at every touch point.) It may be the tough economic climate that is causing AA to make changes, but they seem to be forgetting what matters.

Over the past few years, my loyalty has been drifting slowly to other airlines. A recent experience with both their web site and follow-up telephone interactions have completely destroyed any brand loyalty I had left. AA as become my last choice of carrier.

June > I'm not defending AA's design. My issue is more with Curtis' approach.

"That's the way it is in the Real World" is such a terrible, terrible excuse.

Curtis' design is lovely. It is sad that bad process & politics gets in the way of delivering lovely things to people. :(

whoops I am a retard - my above comment was aimed at Amy :)

Joe Stevens > I think the comparison to Apple is moot. Why on earth are we comparing to Apple and not another airline? Apple is a design-driven product company. It's in their design language to make minimalist, clean sites, that's what their market expects and their products then sell themselves. What do you want, a big half-page photo of a plane ticket on the AA site, complete with drop-shadow? NOW INTRODUCING, PLANE TICKET NANO.

Give me a break.

No one here is saying the AA site is the best example of an airline website in the world. My issue is with not understanding how a big company like that works, creating a mockup and being so arrogant about it. Several points in Curtis' original letter were just over the top, IMO. Suggesting AA fire their design team, suggesting that somehow, magically this design will increase revenue (where is the analysis?) - I think some humility would be a good tactic next time round. If Curtis had just said "here's the kind of AA site I want to use - what do you think, AA design team?" and left it at that, we might actually be having some useful discussion right now.

I would like to add my thoughts here as a customer of AA with no web design credentials. I fly about 100K a year on AA and therefore am constantly checking their site for flight bookings, schedules, seating assignments & upgrades. I agree completely with Dustin, the site is slow and clumsy. I often have to send preferred flight details to clients, this requires highlighting the text on the web page & then pasting it into an e-mail (cleaning up the line spacing as I go). Surely a simpler system could be devised for what must be a commonly recurring situation?

Checking the site on the road, perhaps on a flaky hotel WiFi network or with poor reception on my network card is a frustrating experience as I wait for the poorly rendered drop down menus to appear last. A travel website should be optimized to load fast and clean from even the most obscure foreign internet cafe or at least have a low resolution option for the most needed tasks.

I sincerely hope that AA will take Dustin's comments seriously and work with talented designers like him to improve their web services.

While I appreciate getting approval and sign off from lots of stakeholders can be difficult and may change the end result of a layout / design, there is no excuse for such a poorly designed website that needs the internet and online service to be at the core of its business proposition.

With a site like that they are basically inviting people to book with other airlines, airlines that have easier to use websites. The AA website has everything wrong, too many things to list (I started and then deleted them).

Good design does and usability does improve sales, if only by lowering the risk of annoying users and having them go elsewhere.

I have a friend whose son works for AA and I sent his to him. I've been using that site for years, and I know first hand how it sucks. However, even Southwest's sucks when you look at it in terms of the design possibilities.

While I agree that Curtis came off a little hostile, it provoked a response. And possibly even a reaction in the near future. So was he out of line? Hardly. This is a large business, where the higher-ups need to be aware of issues like this. This is their public image, and it needs to be cared for. If it takes a bit of arrogance to inform them, so be it. While Curtis' design is pretty, it's not exactly fully functional. HOWEVER, it's a start! And it's a pretty good idea to base a fast and functional design off of. When I design (and any other designers hopefully) I hardly expect the final result to look like the initial concept. This would be no exception. There are certain must-haves on any site, and this would be no different. However, you need to prioritize and organize. Put the essentials on the front page. Where if you were a customer, what is the main reason you come? To check-in to flights, check times, book flights and compare prices to other airlines. That doesn’t mean throw every possibility at you and hope you can find it quick enough before you lose interest and try the next option. If everything is top priority, nothing is top priority. Put the essentials, an ad or two, and use an intuitive organization system to help the customers find what they are looking for in 1-2 clicks. I took a look at a few other airline websites. Some didn't even have input for flight requests/quotes on the front page, just ads. Some had almost no ads and just sweet, sweet functionality. On average though, they still had about half as much information shoved down your throat as this one. The minimalist approach won't really fit in this industry, as much of its revenue is pending the latest and greatest travel deals and vacation getaways. But in a time of economic duress, everything needs to be at its finest if you want to stay competitive. If this is the best they can do, well, that's a damn shame.

Doesn't it simply show too much "corporate fat"? No wonder large corporations fails - too many people doing too little work.
Does it really take 70 people to decide on a website? Plain stupid. Fire those 70 slackers and let the smaller group decide! :D

Thanks to everyone for commenting. I just want to make two points: First, Curtis's design contains a ton more functionality than could fit in the screen capture, so it's not quite as bare as it seems from the limited screen caps above. The real AA website, on the other hand is far worse--it sprawls for inches and inches with tons of pointless information. Also, I wholeheartedly disagree with anything that contends that satsifying "stakeholders" requires such wanton messiness as you see on the AA site. Delta's is a whole lot better. So is Orbitz's. And if you want to see a site with lots of functionality and data, but with a clean design, try Kayak or Farecast. We're not talking about an either-or, which pits a hideous design against a pretty but functionless site. You can do both. That's the beauty of good designs, and that's where the talent of good designers comes into play.

Oh, my goodness! I just spent some time looking through the referenced material on Dustin Curtis' website. Beautiful design, yes, but accompanied by the most unattractive and withering snobbery. I actually got heartburn just reading it.

After hearing back from an AA UX designer, Mr. Curtis writes,
"...I wasn’t even sure AA.com had an official design team, much less a “UX architect," and, "to my absolute astonishment, the guy is actually pretty good at what he does."

The hyperbole, the condescension, the shameless conceit. Quite a turn-off!

No one needs every link on the home page, above the fold. Through user testing you can determine that x% of your customers simply want to do a flight/time search for the lowest price and then you can design the home page accordingly. Mr. Curtis' design has done that. Yes, he may lose some clickthroughs to their multiple ad buttons, but really, you're already on their site -- do they need so much internal advertising?

if the design is great and the approach is streamlined, i don't care how snobby the designer is... knowing how to define and criticize things that truly fail is part of being a great designer/leader.
bravo dustin

Really this is a case of shame on Fast Company. It seems to be mining the internet so that it has something to put on the page and in my inbox. I’m not saying that AA website is great, I don’t know enough to give a considered opinion but I did explore the main source of this article.

I looked at Dustin's websites read the comments and I'm not overwhelmed by the content, layout, days to death counter, or other factoids that seem to be spread about on these web pages. His sites are trying to be Jan Chipchase in flavor but without the substance.

What is he telling me through his site; that he a UX guru or that he is 22... Dustin is 22.

Fast Company, he is not really qualified, as far as I can tell, to generate the type of in depth analysis of web interfaces, end user desires, or company culture that would be required to make a thoughtful critique of the AA website and its development. I expect more from Fast Company and would expect that even internet published articles would have a better vetting process than I find in this one.

Dustin has an opinion and in this blog eat blog world that is all that seems to count. He was going to be a neurosurgeon and now he designs web pages. Ok, but it seems to me that, at 22, Dustin has little in the way of real training or perspective That Fast Company readers want and I would have expected Cliff Kuang to have recognized this.

And so I’ll question Fast Company’s internet editor; is this really news or just filler?

Thanks for commenting Victor---But I disagree with your assessment entirely. The point of the post isn't about Dustin's design. It's about the corporate process that the response of Mr X exposed. Clearly, no one is actually advocated that Dustin's design goes up now. The question it poses is: If design improvements are so easy to create, why don't they actually become reality? That's useful news on any day of the week.

@Victor--Also, another point I'll add that it's pretty great that someone who's 22 can tweak--and possibly effect change at--a massive corporation like AA. The real "shame", as you put it, is that the company isn't the one applying this type of pressure to itself.

I'm an AA customer. One has to be in Tucson, your choices are so few. I think the website is middling. I use it because unless I do, I cannot book online at AA or check my mileage. On the other hand, other airlines are hardly better. I also fly SAS and it's a complete wreck, with the additional penalty that there's no one to complain to except Customer Service -- and for that you need a password! The best and easiest to use airline website remains Southwest Airlines, which has made it a corporate mission to listen well to its customers.

I took a similar approach and came up with a revised FedEx home page design http://www.freshtilledsoil.com/blog/fedex-home-page-redesign.html and then again for GoDaddy's site - http://www.freshtilledsoil.com/blog/godaddy-home-page-redesign.html

Jon> I think you are wrong. here's why:

A computer is a computer company, they all have hard drives, ram, monitors, etc. They all pretty much do the same thing. Apple stands out because they approached it differently, they understood that design adds a unquantifiable value, an experience. Airline companies all do the same thing, they all have pretty much the same planes, seats, airports, gates, ticket counters, etc. The ONLY things that is a competitive difference in that industry is the experience. Dustin (who I don't know) understands that the website is part of that experience. Can I book a ticket on the AA site, sure... is it a pleasing experience, probably not.

Simplicity has value. The process internally within AA ignores that. You suggest that arbitrarily removing buttons and banners is bad, I agree, but removing the clutter is not. there is a difference. AA built a website that serves it's needs, not the needs of the customer. They built a website for every possible scenario assuming that the bulk of the prospective passengers want that... when the reality is that the bulk of prospective passengers want 2 things, to check a price and to book a ticket.

Your post argues that Dustin didn't make an informed decision... wtf? would you prefer that informed decisions be made by your internal focus group or actual passengers?

Mark b> the iceland air site is gorgeous. thx.

Cliff,

You are advocating a design through the article (the pictured design/comparison) and in your comments you say that it is an "improvement". But we have no way of knowing if it is better until we use the (Dustin's) design, it is untested and no qualification of design criteria or analysis of use concerning the design has been given.

There is also no case study on how the AA design was developed just the hear-say null mea culpa on Dustin's blog which you use as insider proof that AA corporate process has created bad design.

So Fast Company really is asking us to assume that the AA design and process is bad and that Dustin's is better.

You can see where I'm going with this; I want the news from Fast Company to give me facts, to make me think, to provide clues on how I could apply, in this case, design process. If this were an Op-Ed then I'd take it as opinion but this is a news story with a very inflammatory (and exciting) headline.

I was all set to hear about design gone wrong but there are just a lot of loose ends and assertions in the piece which don't give any facts or direction that I might use in my work.

I used Dustin's lack of experience (age because I don't have his qualifications) to illustrate that design passion and reactionary “solution” without good design process and inquiry is too often used as a misguided design impetus. Your article's construction simply reinforces the "if I design it then it will all be better" syndrome that I see creating more bad (and wasteful) design than good design.

I was expecting an article that informed me about how design, design process or corporate structure creates bad design and/or how Dustin's process made it better. If you had shown a better design process and if Dustin had pitched his idea to AA and they had adopted it then you would have had a great story. It's just not there and the story is just an extension of blog content. This is why I question Fast Company's editorial standards.

Maybe I'm expecting too much from free content.

@Victor--I think the proof that AA's design process is bad is the bad design of their website. As for how they would improve that, perhaps a good start would not to be to have the byzantine process that Mr X outlines, and decisions made by middle managers who aren't actually concerned with UX. That seems like a worthwhile lesson, no? Especially in an age where companies often hire designers then tweak their recommendations beyond all recognition and thereby water down the actual quality. No where does that imply design for design's sake, as you imply.

When I was 22, I thought I knew everything too. Dustin's design is lovely, and AA's is hideous, no doubt. But his rant is overreaching.

Outside of general principles, we don't know anything about usability till we actually go through lots of testing with actual users. Dustin writes about "the customer" as if there's just one customer persona - and if we focus on him/her, everything will be OK. AA caters to hundreds of thousands of customers who represent hundreds of personas. There is no single customer for its "customer-facing" website. Writing "none of that bureaucratic crap matters" reveals naivete about working in such a large, diverse organization. Who gets to decide what matters? Just in web development, they're going to appoint a czar who can decide everything and veto every other departmental need? Obviously not.

Despite his tone and dramatic oversimplification of the problem, he's probably right. Dustin infers (probably correctly) that AA's corporate culture is broken. But he presents it all so glibly and so certainly, it's very off-putting. He believes AA sucks, and we all likely have horror stories to confirm this, but the problems at AA are no-doubt very complex and very boring - not suited to Internet ranting. Fixing problems in large organizations takes A LOT of time and work. AA may not be able to fix its problems. It may go down, and that's OK. Because smaller, nimbler organizations that aren't encumbered with a broken culture might be able to compete better.

Working at an in-house "agency", one of the biggest challenges is our tendency to bend and bow to the whims of our internal customers, often times putting aside the true customer. In addition, as a non-profit society, we are also at the whim of our board- which leads to greater challenges. C'est la vie! te

Basically, AA's site is not appealing, graphically or functionally. When a site is that bad, something is wrong internally that can't solve their own problem of communicating to their audience. You can certainly take the new flavor of curtis' design and apply it to the current site, that would help some. It's the unfortunate outcome of many large companies that don't trust the people doing the actual work to know what appeals to their audience. Starting simple and building on top of that seems to be Curtis' point, trying to appeal to every single customer is an impossible feat and will most likely burn you in the end as a company. Web sites don't take a monumental team to make, less is more. Sure there are business factors that need to be taken into consideration. Organizing information in a way that makes the customers needs accessible should be priority on a site like this. Using clean, modern simple lines was all Curtis was suggesting visually. It's the fact that the bad decisions were made in the first place to end up with a terrible layout.

There is absolutely nothing arrogant in Mr. Curtis' assertion that his experience with American Airlines was less than exemplary. Quite the contrary. Corporations pay researchers and focus groups great sums for this type of information. In truth, the worst that can happen is that the customer simply vows to never return again, without giving the provider an opportunity to know why. All the while, telling everyone they know about their negative experience. Instead, Mr. Curtis was straightforward and honest in his assessment of what he was paying for. Regardless of his professional intention, as a customer, Mr. Curtis gave AA both his time and his unfettered assessment of their service. A company can only be so lucky.

As Mr. Curtis later realized, the actual designers at AA were only part of the problem (and likely, a very small part). I would wager to guess that AA's site is actually the result of the airline wanting to do too much. It's an all-too-common approach to design. A customer request here, coupled with a desire to keep in lockstep with the competition and (I'm assuming) some "killer concepts" from Corporate Marketing; and all of a sudden, the site means nothing to anyone. It is not only rendered ineffective, but rather is, at least in part, responsible for a negative customer experience. The site becomes a laundry list of well-intended ideas that blur the very focus of the product. It's a simple, yet costly mistake which is rooted in simple, yet uninformed intent. In this model, there is no architect, but rather, a group of builders without a plan. And it happens more often than not.

I do take issue with Mr. Curtis' suggestion that the core problem is one of taste. Taste is subjective. I believe the issue is one of planning, or lack thereof. It's also apparent that there is little, if any, strong leadership at AA in terms of brand management. People need to fly and they have choices. Word travels quickly and customer experience is everything in an industry already plagued with a questionable record. Flying used to be regarded as a privilege. Not anymore. If an airline doesn't respond, the customer will migrate to another.

The next move—the real move—is now up to American Airlines. Whether AA heeds Mr. Curtis' design direction is beside the point. But if they want to prove that they're a nimble organization, with customers foremost in mind, they will use this call-to-action as a springboard. This is an opportunity. Mr. Curtis just served it up.

+ + +

Eric Hillerns
Pinch. A Design Office.
Web: http://www.pinch.nu

DISCLAIMER: I'm a principal designer at a design research and product development firm. We specialize in user experience design of transaction based systems.

One of our guiding principles for design is "Emphasize everything and emphasize nothing." The AA.com site, along with the USAir.com site both suffer from this mentality.

As for @JonCockle's comments that Dustin Curtis doesn't know the ins and outs of the business of AA.com, well, that's probably true. But then, neither does Jon Cockle. So, you guys are probably about equal.

Speaking as someone who has worked on sites that are transaction based with millions of visitors per month who rely on advertising revenue, I'd bet the small badge style advertisements are less effective than the text ads and large block ad in the center of the page. Hopefully AA.com has some metrics on this.

While Dustin's design has clearly left off a number of "features" that currently exist on the AA.com site, the general direction inspires greater confidence in the AA.com brand than does the current AA.com site. The current site gives the impression that the company is run by an IT organization with very little appreciation for brand or experience. And that, my friends, will penetrate through the entire customer experience of flying AA.

The current AA.com site is a clear picture of internal politics and not informed design. True informed design is based on data, as @JonCockle points out, but balances customer goals with business objectives. Something the current site clearly fails at.

As a 100k plus frequent flier, I'd say that Dustin's design is missing a few things like quick access to checking in online, or changing my reservation, but it's definitely heading in the right direction.

Oh, and @JonCockle, to your point about ads, well, in Dustin's design, the promotion space is much larger than the current AA.com site and I'd imagine that it acts like a cover (e.g. moving billboard). There's more than one way to handle advertising—I know, as I've worked on a number of very large ad-dependent sites. And if you have, you'd know the same.

dan> "Fixing problems in large organizations takes A LOT of time and work." maybe that is more of the problem than Dan's simplification of the site. the problem with AA is a business process problem, and it's a collaboration problem. There should be a website czar.

I had a brother who passed away years ago... he was mysteriously ill and had numerous doctors from different fields. The weird thing is that every doctor was convinced his illness was specific to their fields of medicine. One doctor was right, and much of the time needed to help him was lost narrowing it down to that doctor. My point is that you could have 100 departments that have to be satisfied with the website... but if that is your take where does the customer fit in? the current website is the public solution to all the departments at AA that support the website. the failure is that it does nothing for the customer.

@ Jon
the design isn't prettier - it is better as it provides much better UX [user experience] and usability
no clutter, intuitive navigation, clear 'scent trails' i.e. where to follow
the original website is truly a horror