PlanetEye

December 8th, 2008

Map and Recommendation Improvements

Adam Bullied: Director, Product Management

Every month, we are actively working to improve PlanetEye. With our latest release, you will notice some big changes to your Travel Packs (and maps in general), and also your travel preferences. I wanted to take an opportunity to point out those changes and how they can help you better plan your next trip.

Map Updates

The 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 believe this can be accomplished by focusing on methods for planning visually. And for PlanetEye, that means our maps.

The screenshot below shows the map view for Boston, MA.

You will notice we’ve made the category colors easier to spot, and cleaned-up the “cards” that represent each place. The details that were there are now contained within each map pin. If you click on one, you will see what I mean.

Travel Pack Changes

We always want to make the travel planning process easier and more intuitive. Previously, Travel Packs were separated out in to both a list and a map view.

Those two pages have now been consolidated in to one featuring maps for each destination within the Travel Pack. In addition, a much easier navigation process - including a mini trip overview - is provided.

Also, you no longer have to edit the Travel Pack in order to add destinations to your trip plan - you can simply add them right from this page.

You can check out my Pasadena Travel Pack, from which this screenshot was taken for a live example.

Contacts

Ensuring your personalized matches deliver the best places for you is something we spend a lot of time working on. As we add more and more information to PlanetEye, we are continuously improving the ways in which that information is presented so you can build trips quickly without sacrificing the quality of a hotel or restaurant.

What better information to help find these locations than from other travelers?

For example, you can add me. Because I used to live in Pasadena, CA I’ve written and rated a lot of restaurants around that area that I’ve been to - so if you are taking a trip to LA and have me as a contact, you will see which places I liked to frequent and why. This contributes to helping you make your travel decisions more easily.

Each rating and review (or Travel Pack) created by your contacts gets taken in to account along with all of your other other travel preferences to ensure the best places for you will appear near the top of each list. In the screenshot below you can see why the restaurant Casa Tua was recommended to me while browsing Miami Beach.

To edit your travel preferences, login to your PlanetEye account and go to your profile. Click on the “Set Travel Preferences” button under your profile picture and check off the things you prefer to see and use while planning a trip.

We are dedicated to creating a great travel planning product and always love to hear about how we can do better. You can reach me directly to tell me what you think we can do to improve.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 8th, 2008 at 11:42 pm and is filed under PlanetEye. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.