The Incompetence of American Airlines and the Fate of Mr. X
In short:
- Graphic designer has poor experience with American Airlines’ web site
- Said designer mocks up a better page design for AA.com and blogs about it
- UX designer at American Airlines (who is clearly passionate about his work there) emails said designer, offering some insight into the challenges that they face with such a large team, a large web site/appliation, etc. Not all of the info is very flattering about AA, but, in my opinion at least, very typical of such companies and sites
- AA fires the UX designer.
From the graphic designer who started this whole thing:
When I first learned about [the firing], I was horrified. Mr. X is actually a good UX designer, and his email had me thinking there was hope for American Airlines. The guy clearly cared about his work and about the user experience at the company as a whole. But AA fired Mr. X because he cared. They fired him because he cared enough to reach out to a dissatisfied customer and help clear the company’s name in the best way he could.
UPDATE: I posted this to MetaFilter and got a lot of interesting comments.