However, it gets a lot more useful when searching for stuff that is found in different sorts of categories. A good example of that would be Donald Duck. Below you’ll see that Amazon filters your query automatically into the different categories.

My only qualms with it is, is that it is not directly distinguishable from search results, apart from the fact that it was indented. Perhaps colour could take care of that.

The bad: As is often the case when booking airline tickets, you want to book months ahead. This means that you’d have to click through until you reach the month you want to fly in. If this 6 months from now, this leads to a lot of clicking. Accidentally clicking outside of the calender box removes the entire thing, probably causing frustration. The use case for booking tickets is also a different: you might be shopping around on various sites simultaneously, with 5 or 6 tabs open, in each one looking for flights on the exact same date. This means that you have most likely already chosen two dates and don’t need to be reminded on what day 12 December is. In this case you lose the advantage of having an oversight and the browsing becomes a tedious task.

Drop Down: Baltic Air

The good: Here we have exactly the opposite as at Lufhansa. Through a drop-down you select the dates, maximum amount of clicks: 2. Referring back to the use case of booking tickets, this quick input can be advantageous.

The bad Drop downs cover other navigation elements. You loose oversight of what day you are booking your ticket and a drop down certainly does not remind me of a calendar.

It needs to be mentioned: Baltic Air gives you the option to try both options, although they use a popup to achieve this.

Combination: Dutch Railways

The good:Initially I was skeptical about this pattern since I can name very few times (if any) that I have looked at tickets months in advance. Taking the train in The Netherlands is also more akin to taking a tram, which makes me question why such an elaborate calender is needed. However, I am sold on this because it combines the best of both worlds: a monthly oversight, and a quick way to jump to dates relatively far ahead.

The bad: I am curious how often people actually do check dates far ahead in the future. As with the Baltic air example, the drop down covers other content, which is never really good, but it’s a trade off.

To conclude: I don’t really think any of these are better or worse to such a degree that it is crippling usability. However, the use cases of these sites play an important factor in deciding what pattern is appropriate. For journeys happening withing short notice (buses, trains, etc.) the calendar might be good. For bookings 6 months from now, this might not always be the case.

As opposed to showing you a list of dates and prices for departing and returning flights, they put the prices into a grid with the dates as X/Y values, making it a lot easier to find out what date is cheapest to fly. As an added touch, the cheapest day/flight combination was also highlighted. I wondered why I wasn’t encountering it more often. Recently I did go shopping for some airline tickets and much to my delight I saw Lufthansa’s design pattern implemented. I did a bit of research and found a few more airlines that were doing it. Below some of the results.

Lufthansa
The original (just to be clear: I am not sure whether Lufthansa used it first, I did however encounter it there for the first time). Lufthansa indicates your current date by highlighting them and adding an arrow. What I love most is the color indication given:

Finnair
Here is almost a direct copy, with the difference that the cheapest prices are sadly not highlighted:

KLM
The Dutch carrier implements the grid exactly the same, except for the dates, which are outlined as opposed to highlighted with colour:

I guess you can truly appreciate how nice this works if you see the alternative, which wasn’t hard to find.

Easy Jet
This represenation isn’t all that bad and the attempt is somewhat reminiscent, but it still doesn’t give me the nice oversight:

Olympic Airlines
Finally, if you look at Olympic’s offering you might start to wonder who thought that was a good idea, especially compared to the first three examples shown:

I wasn’t able to find any examples on US Airlines, so perhaps this is a European development. By all accounts though: I think it is a big improvement.

I have added a link to the Spanish version on my own download section. For those of you who haven’t read it, feel free to take a look: Introduction to Good Usability (pdf).

So, I am thrilled to announce that you will be able to get my ebook in Spanish! It is not available for download just yet, but I will make it available as soon as possible.

For more information about EVA you can visit http://www.portaleva.eu