We've been fairly quite about our work on the www.flysaa.com website but much has happened. We've been quiet because the phase 1 'redesign' had to be done under ludicrous deadlines and was in some respects cosmetic in its change.

Nonethless we achieved three things: one, we implemented a new structure based on the travellers experience of the total 'trip' or journey which has laid a foundation for a more customer centric architecture; two, we helped Jack! roll out a much needed refreshed look and feel; and three, the new architecture and navigation concept allows us to begin integrating previously disconnected functions (websites for leisure, business, Voyager, manage my booking, etc).

There are many problems with the new website which we are aware of and it is far from finished. In fact, we're about to start work on phase 2 which will allow us to roll out the more comprehensive user experience solution we created for them in February earlier this year.

Oh, and regardless of the problems, on the day we went live with the phase 1 website we still managed to achieve record flight bookings for any one day in the history of the website.

Posted by jh01 at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

JH-01 has been invited onto an amazing project (which must remain un-named) with some amazing people (who must also remain un-named for the moment) which will be engaging with the community and people of Yeoville in Johannesburg.

The suburb of Yeoville (located alongside the notorious Hillbrow) has changed radically over the past 20 years and is now home to large African foreign national communties (Congolese, Nigerian, Malian, etc) and many new black SA'n residents to this part of Johannesburg. It is a deeply troubled space at the level of culture, security, civil rights, health...you name it. But it's also modern Africa at its most intense and vibrant and for many who have moved there it is a place of opportunity - the reason they came to South Africa.

And what do you know? Again we find a proliferation of Internet Cafes (over 30) in again, a space of 10 or so city blocks. JH-01's involvement is to research the communities use of the cafes, their patterns of use and the kinds of things they need more broadly to function better in this community, Johannesburg and South Africa. We are then going to design a user experience for a website that will be available in the Internet Cafes to help improve their quality of life.

It's an amazing project and we think of it as bottom up e-government and it will hopefully help us on our way to a future objective: to be building better city and country websites.

Posted by jh01 at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)