PlanetEye
Travel Beyond Words
September 29th, 2008
Going Through the Redesign Process
- Adam Bullied
- Director, Product Management
PlanetEye underwent some exciting changes last week.
Redesigns typically happen like that – one day a site looks entirely different from the way it appeared the previous day. A release such as this is a collaborative process, so I thought I would take the time to step through how it works.
For us, we started laying the groundwork for the redesign last March. It started to evolve with the launch of some core functionality as we began down the long and winding road of defining what we were going to do, the creation of a plan, and then proceeding to execute on it.
We can see how the product has evolved to where it is today by looking at our Travel Pack functionality, which really is at the heart of what we do.
When we first implemented it, we took it slow by letting folks only add photos to Travel Packs. Even though it was a no-frills tool, the fundamental aspects of the Travel Pack were there from the beginning.
For example, we leveraged our geotagging capabilities to automatically insert locations into a user’s Travel Pack.
The feature grew from there – offering the ability to associate dates with each location, sharing the Travel Pack with friends and family, and more. This evolution can be traced back through several different areas of functionality within the product.
By the time we were ready to begin the redesign efforts with our friends at Happy Cog, we had a solid set of functionality in place that we knew contributed to taking the product to the next level. That’s not to say a great deal of effort doesn’t go in to these types of things.
Generally, when embarking on a project like this over the course of such an ambitious time frame, you need to be working together to pull it off. There are always bumps in the road as you go – some confusion about the way certain things should look, and, of course, how certain things should work.
The key thing when you are going through a major redesign is to maintain perspective. As I mentioned, while we overhauled a many of the major aspects of the product, (namely, the map and photo management features) we didn’t add a plethora of new features. Throughout the entire project, we stayed focused on the problem that we wanted to solve in the market and our unique approach to do it.
With a release like this, you want to ensure the design is the priority . There are always things to improve on and make better, and you hope that when you release to the public they are a) going to like the product you have created and b) be there to offer insight that will help make the product sing.
It helps we have such a great and dedicated team here at PlanetEye. We were all on board with making the product the best we could.
That leads to passionate discussions that lead to a fantastic product, and hopefully, the acknowledgment by our faithful users that we are continuously enhancing their travel experiences and making it easier for them to discover where they want to go in the world, plan how to get there and what to do, and share those experiences with friends and family when they return.
So by all means – send us your feedback! Comments, suggestions, questions or bugs – it’s all going to help make the best product we possibly can.
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December 12th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
[...] changes really start with the map, as we continue to build upon the efforts we set forth when we released v1.0 in September of this year. Our goal is to help travelers plan their trips more effectively – and we [...]