Orbitz.com and its User-Friendly Desgin

http://www.orbitz.com

The Obitz website is a site that I have been using since senior year of highschool. Many people are familiar with it and rely on it to travel. However, I know for sure if the design, layout, and text were less attractive, Orbitz could lose half its customers. First of all, the wesbite has a blue theme going on; this is a color that reminds most of us of a nice good-weathered sky or a calm ocean. It is a soothing color that cannot make one think more of going away on a vacation or going back home; it reminds one of exactly why you are using the website in the first place. It also makes a person feel comfortable with the website because the color is not obnoxious, too flagrant, or in-your-face.

The text used is also very user-friendly in that it is simple, yet not too boring to keep the user interested and paying attention to it. I also like how the categories of flights, vacation packages, activities, etc. is in bold so that the user does not have to go looking for these things...What the user needs is right before their eyes. In addition to the text, the website has three main attraction boxes. The first one where the user would first look is the biggest and the most commonly used because that is where one can look up flights. The other two boxes seem to be more casual and playful with images included that allow the user to browse different categories as a bonus feature. For instance, these boxes include links to the most popular locations that people go to for vacation, discounts that users may be qualified for, or deals under $200. It is also important to note that images are not the main display of the website, and like Lupton states on pg. 62, "As body, text has more integrity and wholeness than the elements that surround it, from pictures, captions, and page numbers to banners, buttons, and menus." (Lupton 63) The lack of focus on pictures makes the site seem more reliable.

I think because of this overall easy-to-use, fun, comfortable layout that is created, Orbitz has been able to generate a lot of sales from its website. There really is no creative interference on the website and I think the designer of the website did a good job in not going too overboard.

In my opinion, our media culture today is developing but not yet at its peak. People still use paper-made manuals, look at paper-made brochures, etc. In a few years however, with our advancing technology in media as well as the whole green movement, our media culture will be far more important and become a priority to companies and establishments. Websites will become one of the main ways to target larger audiences and customers therefore they will be much more well-designed and a lot more thought and energy will go into making them than now.