Dustin Curtis - Latest Comments in The Incompetence of American Airlines and the Fate of Mr. X

Re: The Incompetence of American Airlines and the Fate of Mr. X

Interfolio — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 16:55:44 -0000

Oops, I didn't mean to post here.

Re: The Incompetence of American Airlines and the Fate of Mr. X

Tim — Wed, 19 May 2010 00:40:27 -0000

No offence, but as the CEO munches his way through lunch over a delightful Coonawarra Shiraz, or perhaps something from Heathcote, I'll be he really gives a sh!t.

Oh wait. No he doesn't.

Crying about AA is like crying over spilt milk. They don't give a sh!t and its only through the apathy and ignorance of the masses that they survive.

Re: The Incompetence of American Airlines and the Fate of Mr. X

Birdyzine — Tue, 11 May 2010 05:42:12 -0000

One of our clients is a very large automotive company. The process for creating and updating their website is just as Mr.X described it. It is long-winded and painful, and the internal corporate politics are astonishing and horrifying in equal measure. This results in a poor experience for the customer unfortunately.
I just wanted to say that one of the most uncomfortable things for me about this situation is the amount of money that just gets poured down the drain by this process. I've seen hundreds of thousands of pounds disappear on projects that didn't even go live. When workers in the factories are losing their jobs and having a hard time financially, it is unacceptable that marketing departments throw money away in the manner in which they do with seeming impunity.

Re: The Incompetence of American Airlines and the Fate of Mr. X

Ariel Goldblatt — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 10:14:41 -0000

Poor Mr. X...

Re: The Incompetence of American Airlines and the Fate of Mr. X

Mr. F — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 19:02:25 -0000

Did you not read the entire article? Mr. X gave him permission to publish his response given that his identifiable name be referred to as "Mr. X".

Re: The Incompetence of American Airlines and the Fate of Mr. X

distgruntledreader — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 09:37:45 -0000

We all need to rate the AA.com website low.

Re: The Incompetence of American Airlines and the Fate of Mr. X

Electronic Cigarette Girl — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 13:31:46 -0000

thats how you lay the smack down. Big or not, they should take responsibility and flex their big boy muscle by fixing issues faster than other companies do.

-Bella

Re: The Incompetence of American Airlines and the Fate of Mr. X

Kevin M — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 19:24:04 -0000

I've been the victim of shortsightedness but I'm not Mr. X.

Re: The Incompetence of American Airlines and the Fate of Mr. X

Sherlock — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 17:15:54 -0000

Well hello, Mr. X.

Re: The Incompetence of American Airlines and the Fate of Mr. X

Stephen Gates — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:32:00 -0000

I hate to rain on this massive parade because American Airlines has clearly lost their way but American Airlines didn't fire him. He work for Tribal DDB as their Senior Information Architect which splits the American Airlines online advertising account with TMA (formerly Temerlin McClain) in Dallas.

Re: The Incompetence of American Airlines and the Fate of Mr. X

Sarah — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:51:56 -0000

American Airlines are the most unapologetically incompetent airline I have ever come across. My baggage was delayed by a day, they lost part of it and told me that I would have to call them and attend the airport if I wanted anything done about it. Their online complaint form does not work, their staff are rude and it turns out they are happy to lose my stuff without so much as an apology. A thoroughly immoral and disgusting company.

Re: The Incompetence of American Airlines and the Fate of Mr. X

Gaea — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 01:58:58 -0000

Hi Mr. Curtis

I just began reading your blog. My initial experience was good. But as I reached this blog, I must say that you seem to have gotten carried away. Yes AA has a bad website, and yes you did good by telling them so. But what you did not realize is this - you began by talking about the incompetence of AA but half way through your blog, you shifted your focus to their Design team! An employee is rarely a complete and true representative of his/her company. One is not in partnership with a company's policies, values and decision making process. Let us be clear about what we are trying to change. Sometimes what we know is just not enough to change the world, it has to be coupled with thoughtfulness at least. Lets not get carried away by mere capability. Lets be humble and thoughtful. I applaud Mr.X's reply to your concern. He deserves to be some place nice and I hope he is!

Mr.Curtis, passion is the essence of life but let's choose our words carefully.

Re: The Incompetence of American Airlines and the Fate of Mr. X

ktwdallas — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 16:20:39 -0000

So ... did Mr. X get hired again (by Sears or anyone else)? Any followup to this?

Re: The Incompetence of American Airlines and the Fate of Mr. X

Drago — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 03:28:34 -0000

Wow, that text is just blinding! I suggest something around the color of the links in the article.

Great content though. All of the stuff I've read so far is great!

Re: The Incompetence of American Airlines and the Fate of Mr. X

Brian — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 23:22:17 -0000

I have to agree with this, I work both for a large company and do my own freelance work so I get to see both sides of the coin. Things I do for my clients in 1 day will take 6 months for a large company to roll out. Although it drives me crazy to see things move this slow I'm not sure I have a solution.

Most large companies are structured in teams and each team member is working on many different projects/on going activities at once. I wonder if things would move faster if you had very specific roles for each individual (one person writes content for a section of the site, one person develops a section, one person manages the design for a particular section.) If you have a small team of people who manage sections of the site they can move in a more agile way and always be improving things in small steps (kaizen model). I understand you would need a strategy to make sure everyone is moving in the same direction and there is consistency across the organization. Not sure if this is the right way but I do believe we'll see some major improvements to organizational structures so change can occur more rapidly across larger companies.

Re: The Incompetence of American Airlines and the Fate of Mr. X

Ralph — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 07:04:44 -0000

I am pretty appaled by your blogpost in which you bash the AA design team, suggest to fire them and offer your own services. I work in a coroporation myself and I know about corporate hierachies and structures and how difficult it is to realize good ideas in such an environment - no matter how good you are at what you're doing. It's so easy to judge from the outside! But who knows what you'd experience if AA took your offer and not let you do what you envision. Now the guy got fired because you dragged his reputation in the mud and publizised his thoughts. A professional like you should be more sensitive about this. From reading this story, I wouldn't hire you as a contract designer any more.

Re: The Incompetence of American Airlines and the Fate of Mr. X

Tim — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:56:09 -0000

Agreed.

Dustin, you come off as remarkably judgemental for someone with so little real-world experience. When you have had some success at modifying corporate culture to suit *your* tastes (which is, in fact, what you're advocating), then maybe your criticism would be viewed with more respect.

The world doesn't work exactly as you'd like, and you've cost one of the good guys his job

Re: The Incompetence of American Airlines and the Fate of Mr. X

Mike — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 13:50:53 -0000

Sad story that repeats itself in monolithic corporate entities across the country every day. Great coverage, BTW.

Re: The Incompetence of American Airlines and the Fate of Mr. X

Tim Keating — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 12:30:33 -0000

Er, no. Common misconception. "Freedom of speech" only applies to the government. For example, your comments on this blog could be censored by the blog's owner and that would not violate your freedom of speech.

Re: The Incompetence of American Airlines and the Fate of Mr. X

Tim Keating — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 12:24:22 -0000

This is the fundamental problem that most large corporations don't get. "90% good or excellent" isn't sufficient. People bitch about the "cult of Apple," when really, all this boils down to is intent. Apple is a design-driven company. Their products aim not to make most of their customers happy, but to create a user experience that is completely unlike anything their customers have seen before and which fills their customers with awe.

I would love to see a tiny dollop of that ideology applied to most of the corps I have to deal with on a regular basis.

Re: The Incompetence of American Airlines and the Fate of Mr. X

ladnc — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 22:55:19 -0000

"Net SAAver Fares.
AAdvantage eSummary
AAirmail
AAdvantage Promotions"

Lol this company just can't help coming up with stupid marketing ideas.

Re: The Incompetence of American Airlines and the Fate of Mr. X

Kfred — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 18:21:51 -0000

After experiencing a completely meaningless 'we care" example of customer service exhibited by American Arilines, I have adopted them as my first Idiot Corporate Sponsor of my blog/website, (n) Flatline Thinking. I can assure you, the exposure is not positive. www.flatlinethinking.blogsp...

Re: The Incompetence of American Airlines and the Fate of Mr. X

Nathanael Coyne — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 05:55:20 -0000

Perhaps Dwight stumbled on this hierarchy of UX roles that places Architect as the top dog: http://bit.ly/8TpPBG

Re: The Incompetence of American Airlines and the Fate of Mr. X

Droid — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 18:19:57 -0000

Though a CEO can definitely drive a faster time table on a deliverable by making it a number one company-wide priority, your example still displays some ignorance about the capabilities of a large company to do agile development. I have worked at both large and small companies, and I have a better understanding now of the many processes that affect the timeliness of large corporations to deliver change.

If we were to use your example, of you only needing to spend 1 month on a big standalone CMS project... here is how it would more realistically translate within a big corporation:

Somebody comes up with a big idea that needs a big new CMS and they must research, present, and then doggedly sell that idea to their upper management - 3 months
Upper management debates about and then approves the idea - 1 month
Project is added to the project list and prioritized amongst all the other project in the queue - 3 months
Business team is assigned the project, they build business requirements for the project - 1 month
Design, marketing, and content are finally engaged in the effort to start envisioning the project to match business requirements and they work together to create a prototype - 3 months
The prototype has to be usability tested which may mean additional changes to the prototype - 1 month
The content model is final and then has to be approved up and down the board by management and upper management and legal and various quality control experts (content is approved, design is approved, etc) - 2 weeks
The project can finally be handed off to IT to create the back end system, which must go through even more strenuous testing and approvals - 3 to 6 months
Business sponsors and upper management have to be engaged because not every feature they want can be rolled out within their timeline so they debate back and forth and finally either extend the timeline of the project or take things out of the scope - time varies
The final code release goes through an extensive series of system tests - 1 month
Effort is released to the public - 1 day
Wash and repeat...

So what takes you a mere month to produce, can roughly take a large company with a clunky process anywhere between a year or two years... and that would also require some heroics being performed along the way, people working overtime and weekends, hundreds of temps hired, etc. Believe me, I've seen it.

Smaller changes may not take as often, but those small changes that take you a few hours out of your day to do would turn into at least a 2 month end-to-end process for a big company.

Understandably, this is the issue large companies have to face - not being able to move as fast as their competitors. But how to solve the problem? Who knows? Maybe Google.

Re: The Incompetence of American Airlines and the Fate of Mr. X

Ryan M — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 03:35:14 -0000

Careful. You're most likely next.