This is great! I work as a dev on a related travel product (mentioned in a comment here actually) and our in-progress redesign has the things you mention as priorities (speed/clarity).
I'm going to go ahead and say travel apps in general suck, so I'm not surprised to hear your sentiment towards TripIt's iPhone app haha.
One thing that I appreciate is that you understand the difficulty in designing these kinds of apps. On the surface it's "oh. well it's really just a bunch of lists and buttons with labels and text", and I think that's the approach a LOT of travel companies take. They value the tech/info more than the way it's presented. Luckily there is a LOT of room for improvement in this industry, and with devs who care about experience and designers who understand tech we should be able to make a big dent. I honestly thought TripIt would be one of those companies though...
I'm going to go ahead and say travel apps in general suck, so I'm not surprised to hear your sentiment towards TripIt's iPhone app haha.
One thing that I appreciate is that you understand the difficulty in designing these kinds of apps. On the surface it's "oh. well it's really just a bunch of lists and buttons with labels and text", and I think that's the approach a LOT of travel companies take. They value the tech/info more than the way it's presented. Luckily there is a LOT of room for improvement in this industry, and with devs who care about experience and designers who understand tech we should be able to make a big dent. I honestly thought TripIt would be one of those companies though...