Prototypes for Home Page Map

March 12, 2010

Frequent communication of work in progress is always crucial. I often use video to demonstrate work when I cannot easily meet stakeholders for review.

Below is an example of one such video. Here, I am showing prototype concepts of a map for the home page of the site. Earlier, we had produced the basic ideas in a paper sketching session with some stakeholders. I then went away and explored the ideas further.

Note that when I prototyped one of them (the last treatment shown in the video), I discovered an interaction design flaw that we hadn’t spotted in the earlier discussion.

This video has audio - so turn sound on (March 2025: but that's all you get really as this was originally a SWF)

Background

This project was in response to a desire to introduce a map on the home page that would not involve too much design and build work. We therefore did not want a fully-featured “map search” UI. The challenge was to make the map essentially a playful, exploratory interaction for customers not intent on booking at that time. The primary value of the map was intended to show that we have a world-wide inventory of hotels. However, we also wanted to see if we could incorporate other functionality if possible.