Do you think there could be a better way to shop for cruises?

if I want to buy a purse, I can go to any online store, specify the type, size, color, designer, etc, and see relevant options. But if I want to find a cruise for a family with 3 kids, with a kid program that will allow all of my kids to participate together, on a ship that has in-room childcare and wine-tasting classes, I'll have to do a large amount of research on my own. If anything was possible, how would you want it to work?

To clarify, I am not looking for a cruise for myself... I described the situation as an example. I am a product designer, and I working on designing an interface that would help customers or travel agents make better decisions about which cruise to take. I want to understand if this is something that cruisers and agents would find valuable, or if the tools that already exist are sufficient and no new tools are needed.

Cruise Critic and those forums already do a pretty good job, plus you have the forums where like Fodors you can ask these kind of questions.

If I am just searching by itinerary I use Vacations to Go.

I also think the current forums and web sites do a very good job of providing information about cruises. For example, the question about kids' programs could be posted or searched on cruise critic and probably answered right off. Cruise critic does a wonderful job of evaluating programs, ports and ships.

It is easy to gather information and opinions. Choices are sometimes limited within a few parameters: date, itinerary, ports, ships. Example: I want to go to the Caribbean in mid-March on a kid/family oriented ship and itinerary. I want to depart from a US port and don't want to depart from a cold weather port or Texas. That leaves me with mostly Florida, whichever ships depart from those ports in that time frame and which fit my budget. There are only a 1/2 dozen choices. If there is a particular port I want to visit, the choices are more limited - two or three at most. Vacationstogo does an excellent job of sorting all that out in your basic parameters and it gives you nearly everything. It is not that complex.

Forums that provide descriptive information are as helpful as just statistics. Facebook is really useful and just about any question you have, someone will answer or have an opinion.

I don't see a need for anything else.