The Brief

To create a beautifully designed and usable desktop product that would keep business travellers informed of all their flight and travel needs as well as promoting Microsoft Vista.

Our Solution

The Vista Gadget was our fist project with easyJet and it was Microsoft who did the matchmaking. We had been working with Microsoft to design and develop user-focused products based on the then new OS Vista alongside our partners Flow Interactive. The easyJet Vista Gadget was to be used by Microsoft at the launch of Vista in the UK in December 2006.

Using our User Centred Design approach it became that the business travellers who used easyJet could be better served with a more focused and portable travel tool. Thus making them the perfect audience of the Vista gadget project.

We followed a rapid user centred design process over 8 weeks that included the following activities.

• Research both with real users and stakeholders
• Rapid interaction design and prototyping
• Testing concepts and prototypes with users
• Rapid Visual design concept creation with a focus on creating a product that had a tactile, physical nature
• Development of the Microsoft Vista gadget

So over a period of 8 weeks Splendid, with Flow Interactive, developed a personalised business tool for business travellers with the following functionality:

• The ability to store all active flights and access from them from the desktop, even when not connected to the internet
• The ability to manage all flights, add extras and look at destination information such as weather
• The ability to name and store regular or favourite flights
• The ability to search for new flights directly from the desktop

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