Kayak's Web Site Takes Its Influence From Mobile for Its Latest Design
Travel comparison site Kayak.com has redesigned its Web site so it looks like its mobile app — not the other way around. — “We run the iPhone and iPad teams separately from the Web team, and the Web team had fallen behind …
Context & Ripple Effects
In 2009, Yahoo tailored its mobile site to the iPhone through an iPhone-focused mobile overhaul, while Google documented successive changes to its mobile web-app design. Those examples treated mobile as a distinct product surface.
Kayak reverses that hierarchy: its web experience is being brought into line with the interface developed for iPhone and iPad users, addressing the gap created by separate product teams.
First-order effects
- Kayak’s web users receive an interface aligned with its iPhone and iPad apps, while the web team’s older design is replaced by mobile-derived patterns.
Second-order effects
- Keeping the web and mobile experiences aligned makes interface decisions a shared product concern for Kayak’s separate platform teams, rather than allowing the web product to evolve independently.
Third-order effects
- If other services adopt the same approach, mobile interaction patterns will increasingly become the reference point for web redesigns, narrowing the historical divide between app and browser product design.
The trend: Mobile is shifting from a companion channel to a design reference point for companies’ broader digital products.