Evaluation of User Experience across all Ryanair Digital Platforms

Ryanair Digital Evaluation 1
Project Title: Evaluation of User Experience across all Ryanair Digital Platforms
Presented by: Shane Hickey
Course: Certificate in Digital Marketing
Module: Technology and User Experience
Lecturer: Dermot Bradfield
Date: 10/12/2014

Table of Contents
1.0) Executive Summary
2.0) Ryanair
2.1) Digital History
2.2) Ryanair Digital Labs
2.3) Website Redesign
2.4) App Relaunch
3.0) Method of Evaluation
3.1) Nielsen’s Heuristics
3.2) Hypothesis
3.3) Scenario
3.4) Persona
3.5) Test Methods
4.0) Test Results
4.1) Summary of Desktop Evaluation
4.2) Summary of Mobile Evaluation
4.3) Summary of App Evaluation
4.4) Conclusion
4.5) Criticisms of the Report
Bibliography
Appendix A Desktop Site Evaluation 1
Appendix B Desktop Site Evaluation 2
Appendix C Desktop Site Evaluation 3
Appendix D Mobile Site Evaluation 1
Appendix E Mobile Site Evaluation 2
Appendix F Mobile Site Evaluation 3
Appendix G App Evaluation 1
Appendix H App Evaluation 2
Appendix I App Evaluation 3

1.0) Executive Summary
Ryanair is one of the world’s largest and most successful airlines. They have enjoyed huge growth
through a low cost model based largely on the Southwest Airlines approach in the US. Although
offering customers fantastic value in terms of pricing they were viewed poorly in terms of customer
service both online and offline.
It is fascinating in many ways how the company has experienced phenomenal year on year growth
based largely on its price point while at the same time being one of the most controversial and
arguably hated brands of all time.
Their most recent strategy has been to improve customer experience and a large part of this has
been to improve the digital experience of their customer. This has resulted in a number of initiatives
including a website redesign and also a new and improved App that allowed airline ticket purchase
and downloading of boarding passes onto smartphones.
All of these initiatives have been developed at the new Ryanair Digital Labs which is striving to
provide a world class online travel platform.
The purpose of the report is to therefore assess the quality of the user experience on the new
Ryanair website and also to determine whether the quality of this user experience is replicated
across the new mobile site and App.

2.0) Ryanair
Ryanair was established in 1985 and using a low cost model has grown to become Europe’s favourite
airline (Ryanair, 2014). Michael O’Leary, the Ryanair CEO, has himself admitted to replicating the
business model of Southwest airlines in the US, the low cost carrier, in Europe (CNBC, 2013).
This low cost model coupled with the deregulation in the Aviation industry legislation under the
“Open Skies” policy have been the two greatest contributors to Ryanair’s success (RTE, 2014).
In 2013 Ryanair was both the largest European airline by scheduled passengers carried (Huffington
Post, 2013). It also came fifth in terms of the busiest International airline by passenger numbers,
carrying over 80 million passengers last year. (Wikipedia, 2014).
According to its own website they operate 1,600 flights daily from 70 bases connecting 183
destinations in 30 countries and operating a fleet of more than 300 Boeing aircraft (Ryanair, 2014). It
is also expected that the airline will carry over 3.5 million customers over the 2014 Christmas period
(Independent, 2014).
Even with all its success the company has endured a volatile relationship with its customers. The CEO
of Ryanair, Michael O’Leary, has made some infamous quotes down through the years that reflected
the company’s attitude to its customers and they included:
“People say the customer is always right but you know what - they’re not. Sometimes they
are wrong and they need to be told so” (Telegraph, 2012)

2.1) Digital History
According the Ryanair corporate website the consumer site, www.ryanair.com, was launched in
2000 and within the first three months the site was taking over 50,000 bookings a week (Corporate
Ryanair, 2014). Although thousands of customers choose to fly with Ryanair given its pricing
structure the Ryanair website has come under heavy criticism for its poor user experience and gaudy
appearance (Harbison, 2012).
One of the major criticisms of the site had been the number of click through’s which a customer
needed to make before they eventually purchased their ticket, through the old website this had
been measured at 15 clicks (The Marketing Institute, 2014). Customers were offered car hire, hotels
and travel insurance which was very much in keeping with the Ryanair mantra of trying to sell to you
at every opportunity.

Another infuriating feature of the site was the Captcha which asked users to rewrite text that
appeared in a box as a form of a security question. It often had very difficult to read text or had
obscure messages like “I fancy you” (Barry, 2013).
There have also been numerous accusations of Ryanair advertising rates at one price and then
having additional charges on the website resulting in customers booking fares which far exceeded
the price they thought they would pay. This resulted in Ryanair having continuous difficulties with
Advertising authorities and consumer protection associations (BBC, 2010).

Ryanair were also guilty of using UX dark patterns according to a blog called the Digital Tonic (Digital
Tonic, 2014). Essentially dark patters are where users are tricked into booking additional features or
signing up to something to which they have no knowledge of.
This is particularly evident on the Ryanair website where the default setting is that you purchase
travel insurance and you have to click on a drop down menu to opt out of this purchase. Also the
“please don’t insure” wasn’t listed as a first option or placed in alphabetical meaning the user has to
scroll down to find this option.
2.2) Ryanair Digital Labs
In order for Ryanair to redesign their digital presence and improve user experience they were going
to have to outsource this or hire an internal technology team to assist with this project.
Ryanair Digital Labs was launched with the intention of creating a start of the art digital and
innovation hub in Dublin and according to their spokesperson Robin Kiely “Ryanair changed air travel
in Europe forever – now we want to change the world of online travel and were going to do that
through Ryanair Labs” (Kiely, 2014).

2.3) Website Redesign
Ryanair launched its new look website in April 2014 with a host of new features and a promise of
improved customer experience. There were a number of hitches in the launch of the new Ryanair
website though with a botched rename meaning that the website disappeared from many Google
flight searches albeit the company argued that the brand is so strong that customers search under
the company as oppose to searching for flights (Topham, 2014).
According to an article published in the Telegraph the main features of the new website are:
 Airline ticket purchase has been reduced to five clicks.
 Removal of many products which were previously offered.
 ‘My Ryanair’ feature where users can store their personal information.
 Eradication of flash banners and improvement on design and colour scheme.
 Passengers will be encouraged to share information on social media.
 Improved mobile site.
(Paris, 2013)

2.4) App Relaunch
The original Ryanair mobile app was launched in March 2012 but was only officially unveiled about
six months later and carried a cost of €3 to download it (May, 2012).
The latest update to the App was in July 2014 and is now available for free in both iPhone and
Android formats through the iTunes App store and the Google Play Store (Technology.ie, 2014).
There are a number of new features with the new App including additional language versions such as
Dutch, French, Polish and German and it also allows for IOS Passbook integration (Financial Mirror,
2014).

3.0) Methods of Evaluation
There are a number of methods available when looking to determine user experience. The options
can be listed as follows (Wikipedia, 2014):
 Implicit UX Methods (focus on what the users do not express verbally, examples include eye
tracking and electroencephalography).
 Explicit UX Methods (explore what the users are consciously aware of, examples include
expression and verbal self-reporting).
 Creative UX Methods (where users are allowed to co create with designers examples include
creativity workshops)
 Longitudinal UX (where the user experience is measured over a period for example diary
methods)
Implicit methods normally involve having appropriate software or hardware at your disposal, to
track heart rate for example, and were therefore ruled out of this evaluation. Explicit methods often
focus on emotion evaluation and creative workshops would not be possible as the users will not sit
down with the engineers and designers of the Ryanair website.
It was therefore decided to use longitudinal user experience evaluation to test user’s reactions to
the platforms over a prolonged period, in this project, over a twenty minute period.
In terms of the actual method of evaluation to be used it was decided to use Heuristic Evaluation as
the most appropriate form of measuring user experience across the three Ryanair platforms. The
Heuristic evaluation methodology to be used is that of Nielsen’s Heuristics.
The main reasons for choosing Nielsen’s Heuristics are similar to those outlined by Macefield in his
article “An overview of expert heuristic evaluations” (Macefield, 2014)
 Cheap and easy to perform.
 Takes advantage of evaluations from experts in their field, which the users are, as Digital
marketing students.
 Heuristics are used to move away from opinion and more toward measurement.
Alternatives to Nielsen’s Heuristics that could have been used were Gerhard Powell’s cognitive
engineering principles and the Weinshenk and Barker classification model (Wikipedia, 2014).
Heuristic Evaluation (Nielsen and Molich, 1990; Nielsen 1994) can be defined as:
“A usability engineering method for finding the usability problems in a user interface design process.
Heuristic evaluation involves having a small set of evaluators examine the interface and judge its
compliance with recognised usability principles (the “heuristics”) (Nielsen, 1995).

3.1) Nielsen’s Heuristic’s
The following Heuristics will be tested:
H1: Aesthetic and minimal design
H2: Match between system and the real world
H3: Recognition rather than recall
H4: Consistency and standards
H5: Visibility of system status
H6: User control and freedom
H7: Flexibility and efficiency of use
H8: Help users recognise, diagnose and recover from errors
H9: Error prevention
H10: Help and Documentation
A rating scale of between 0 and 4 will be used to measure each heuristic.
In this particular case nine evaluators will be used so there will be a minimum of three evaluators
per platform. Each platform will then be tested individually by three evaluators. Each evaluator will
be asked to score each platform and add written context where appropriate.
Essentially the evaluators will be asked to comment on the heuristic rating so as to provide some
quantitative research to add to the heuristic scoring of the user experience.
The evaluations will take place unaccompanied and the suggested time each evaluator spends on
this is between fifteen and twenty minutes.

3.2) Hypothesis
The aim of the report was to essentially the hypothesis that the quality of user experience is
replicated across the three digital platforms currently being used by Ryanair which are:
 Desktop site
 Mobile site
 App
As mentioned earlier the company made a huge investment into its digital presence in order to
mainly benefit customer experience and of course ultimately to increase flight bookings. Given the
very poor website experience that customers traditionally associated with Ryanair the first task of
this report was to evaluate the user experience of the new Ryanair website, mobile site and App.
Secondly we can then assess whether the user experience score is replicated across all three
platforms or if there is a deviation in any of them.
This will be achieved by asking users to do three things on each platform:
1) To book a flight through the assigned platform as a guest.
2) To email the company with thoughts on the newly designed platform in question, through their
customer services section.
3) To explore the platform and assess the user experience.
Please see below a screenshot from the App where the evaluator will choose to continue without
registering.

3.3) Scenarios
Scenario 1
A number of decisions were taken when formulating the scenario to test individual elements of the
booking experience. They included booking a return trip that spanned across two months and did
not include the month that we are currently in. This would demonstrate how easy or difficult it
would be to use the Calendar. It would also indicate how comfortable the user experience is in terms
of adjusting the default settings which are normally given based on time and location.
It was also important to give the scenario a specific arrival and departure airport as this meant the
same booking was being tested across all the platforms and again the locations given were those
that would not include the airport given in the default settings. Essentially the departure flight was
to be from Malaga and not from Dublin which the Ryanair site being accessed by an Irish IP address
would default to.
To book a return ticket from Malaga to Dublin for one adult and one child departing on December
23rd
and returning on January 7th
with no checked baggage or any additional bookings such as car
hire or hotels. The user is to go through the whole experience up until the point where they have to
click on the final purchase icon after submitting all personal and payment information.
Scenario 2
Users were originally going to be asked to create a ‘My Ryanair’ profile and then to rebook the same
flight details that were given in scenario 1 but credit card information needed to be added which
was outside the scope of this project so instead users will be asked to locate the Ryanair customer
services details and email the company. The contact us form on the App can be seen below.
Scenario 3
Users will also be given a few minutes freedom to explore the site to assess the UX across the site.

3.4) Persona
The Personas to be used will be participants in the 2014/2015 Digital Marketing certificate course at
the National College of Ireland. The reason for this is that they are considered experts in this field.
Although we are using experts it is recognised that experts don’t necessarily see usability problems
which non experts might see (Macefield, 2014). There will be no distinction made between the sexes
of the evaluators as it is felt this will have no bearing on the results. Nine evaluators will be used in
total.
3.5) Test methods
The evaluators will be asked to go through the system twice, the first pass to test the general flow
and the second pass will allow evaluators to test specific interface elements (Nielsen, 1995).
In the case of each platform the user will need access to the following technology:
 Desktop site (PC with internet access)
 Mobile site (Smartphone with internet access)
 App (Smartphone with internet access)
In terms of the mobile and App site, the mobile device that the user is accessing these sites with
should be recorded as this may have a bearing on the results. The App will is free but users will need
to download it from iTunes or the Google Play store depending on the operating system on their
phone.
The evaluators will be asked to allow 20 minutes for their evaluation.
Please see below the landing page of the mobile site where the App evaluators can download the
App on their smartphone.

4.0) Test Results
The results of the test will be broken into each broken into a summary on each individual platform.
4.1) Summary of Desktop Evaluation
The results from the evaluators regarding the desktop site were very positive from a Ryanair
perspective. The total score on the Heuristics was 18.
The three evaluators had an average score of 6 per evaluator which is very low and indicates a very
satisfactory user experience.
Only one heuristic scored over 2 which was from Evaluator B who gave H8, help users recognise,
diagnose and recover from errors a 3.
Contrary to the historic site the new site is easy to navigate, has a very attractive design
and colour scheme and offers a very positive and enhance user experience.
In particular all of the issues outlined in the beginning of the report have been addressed. The
following have been either improved or removed:
 Improved flight booking process (reduced number of clicks).
 Improved navigation.
 Improved design and colour scheme.
 Removal of captcha’s.
 Price transparency.
 Ancillary offers are presented better.
There are still some issues though with the Ryanair desktop site and that was highlighted by the
evaluators. For example, you still have to opt out of the travel insurance which is listed quite far
down on the drop down menu. Also the live chat facility was not working which some who have had
previous experience of Ryanair customer service was unsurprising.
The offers of the car hire and hotels are still present through the booking process. Suggestions from
the evaluators were that they should come after you conclude your ticket purchase and not before
to improve the user experience further or be a separate tab.
It is obvious to see the work of the Ryanair Digital Labs team in terms of the user experience on the
desktop site and have been key to digitally transforming a brand and website that was actually hated
by many even if they continued to use Ryanair being motivated purely by the price point.

4.2) Summary of Mobile Evaluation
The mobile site did not receive the glowing review that desktop site received although the mobile
site is in fact an exact replica of the desktop site which is in itself a criticism. Ryanair should really
have a mobile optimised site.
perspective. The total score on the Heuristics was 30.
The three evaluators had an average score of 10 per evaluator which indicates a reasonable user
experience but highlights some UX issues.
In terms of why it did not receive a glowing review the evaluator’s heuristics scores and comments
tended to focus on the load speeds of the pages as well as the responsiveness. Areas that were
highlighted included the Calendar and the Route Map. Positives though much like the desktop site
included the wealth of information that was available to the user.
Heuristics that need to be examined as they scored quite poorly in the evaluation included H3,
recognition rather than recall, and H6, user control and freedom and H10, help and documentation.
H10 received a score of 4 from Evaluator E indicating a serious user experience problem.
Areas of the site which received praise included the flight booking process and customer service
options in particular. The Youtube video on the “Online Checkin Guide” was highlighted in particular
by one of the evaluators.
4.3) Summary of App Evaluation
One important feature of the App was that first of all it was free and not charged for as it was
historically a €3 download which was a throwback to Ryanair’s policy of charging customers at every
opportunity.
perspective. The total score on the Heuristics was 30 from the three evaluators.
The three evaluators had an average score of 10 per evaluator which is a reasonable score but does
indicate some user experience issues.
The App only had a reasonable score from the evaluators which was slightly disappointing given the
investment made in the Digital Labs and the resources available to Ryanair. The heuristic which
scored most poorly was H5, visibility of the system status and this referred to at times the frustrating
lack of responsiveness which at times gave no information on the status of the request or action.
The drop down menus were also highlighted as having poor load speed.
In terms of interesting features on the App the evaluators liked the flying aeroplane loading icon, the
colour scheme and the ease of navigation which all added to the user experience. The Calendar was
also highlighted as being easy to use and this feedback was very interesting given that part of the
scenario given to the evaluator was to book flights in different months to test the Calendar.

4.4) Conclusion
Ryanair has transformed the digital experience of user particularly on the desktop site. The mobile
site and the App also scored quite highly in terms of user experience but areas have been
highlighted through the report that are in need of improvement so the user experience has not been
replicated yet across all the platforms.
Ryanair has embarked on the long journey of transforming the online experience for its customers
and through the work of their Digital Labs team can now set the goal of offering the best user
experience as well as the cheapest flights which would be a very strong business model.
4.5) Criticisms of the Report
One criticism that could be levelled at the report is that Ryanair as a major global brand and a
dominant player in the world aviation industry would obviously offer an excellent user experience
through its various platforms.
This is a debatable point though and was certainly not true up until the launch of the new website.
The historic site was certainly an effective website and one supported the Ryanair sales strategy but
there is no doubting that it offered an unbelievably poor record in terms of user experience. Given
this I think it was fair to choose Ryanair as a company and to test their user experience and
particularly across all platforms.
We can see from our findings that the new desktop site is excellent in terms of the user experience
offered but the mobile site and App still have a lot of improvement so it is still surprising to see
global brands launching digital products that have not undergone a rigorous testing procedure.
A second criticism of this report is in terms of the evaluations and the scenario producing real
findings. Unfortunately given the resources at hand it was not possible to ask evaluators to go
through the whole booking process as payment information would have had to be included to
complete the process.
This caused difficulties in the sense that the boarding passes could not be downloaded onto the
particular devices and the “My Ryanair” profiles could not be filled in as they require payment
information. It would have been interesting to test how the booking process was affected using “My
Ryanair” as this function works as an autofill. Also to have seen the soft copy of the downloaded
boarding passes would have been very interesting.
Lastly in terms of the desktop site they were really not that many negative findings as many of the
initial bugs and difficulties that had been there when the site launched had been since eradicated so
the report did not produce many errors on that particular platform.

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Appendix A
Platform being tested (Desktop, Mobile or App): Desktop
Device being used (Make and Model) to access the platform: Toshiba Laptop
Can you please do the following:
1) To book a return ticket from Malaga to Dublin for one adult and one child departing on
December 23rd
with no checked baggage or any additional
bookings such as car hire or hotels. Go through the whole experience up until the point
where you have to click on the final purchase icon after submitting all personal and payment
information.
2) Email customer service in Ryanair with your thoughts on their newly designed platform.
3) Spend a few minutes exploring the site and assess the user experience.
Can you give each heuristic a score between 0 and 4 in the box below?
In the case where you have scored a heuristic less than three can you explain why in comments?
Also can you give some general feedback and any recommendations in the comments box?
Thank you kindly for your participation.
H1 Aesthetic and minimal design 0
H2 Match between system and the real world 0
H3 Recognition rather than recall 0
H4 Consistency and standards 0
H5 Visibility of system status 0
H6 User control and freedom 0
H7 Flexibility and efficiency of use 1
H8 Help users recognise, diagnose and recover from errors 0
H9 Error prevention 0
H10 Help and Documentation 2
Total 3
Comments:
Ryanair have made a very impressive website giving an excellent UX. It could not be more
different in many ways from the old website.
Some criticisms though are the Live Chat facility had no agents available and the travel
insurance, car hire and hotel offers still need to be removed from the flight booking
process.
Improved features include simplified pricing, the removal of the captcha’s, a quicker
booking process and an appealing site design and colour scheme.
The Route Map is also much improved as it used to be painful.

Appendix B
Device being used (Make and Model) to access the platform:
December 23rd
information.
H1 Aesthetic and minimal design 2 Comments:
H1; gave a 2 as it’s very busy and not
immediately obvious where to go. However it’s
not a 4 as it’s not impossible or even difficult
just a level of effort above that which most
businesses are asking of their customers (
supermarkets etc and their continuous attempts
to “guide” the customer with as little thought
from the customer as possible ).
H2 Match between system and the
real world
0 H2; simple language – all calls to action/buttons.
Logical order.
H3 Recognition rather than recall 0 H3; the continuous forward motion of the
system is logical and seems easy to navigate
H4 Consistency and standards 0 H4; consistent look and feel through the booking
process, and importantly, from the home page
to the first conversion page – there’s no
disconcerting change to the environment
H5 Visibility of system status 1 H5; not confusing but with so much information
to elicit from customers and so many add-on
options It takes focus and effort to complete. On
the technical side it passes well – all options are
covered with explanation/escape options.

H6 User control and freedom 1 Back arrows and forward ARROWS CAN CAUSE
SERVER ERROR, THOUGH IT’S EASY TO EXIT
THAT. Returning to start can lose information
put in already.
H7 Flexibility and efficiency of use 0 MYRYANAIR option available to speed up future
interactions
H8 Help users recognise, diagnose
and recover from errors
3 Server error not explained – though this is an
aesthetic problem rather than a functional one,
as no action on the part of the customer is
required.
H9 Error prevention 0 Very robust as I bashed around the site. No
confirmation dialogue boxes on booking.
H10 Help and Documentation 0 Useful info one of three top buttons spanning
site. That leads to comprehensive faq section
and searchable on keywords. Well-spaced with
images to guide which way to navigate.
Total 7

Appendix C
Device being used (Make and Model) to access the platform:
December 23rd
information.
Total 8
Comments:
I scored quite highly as the user experience was very straightforward, did not take up much
time to book flights in comparison to their previous website.
One area that is misleading is the Insurance – and the way it is in a list ‘Don’t insure me’ –
it is quite hidden.
Also there are too many Hire Car options, my suggestion is this should be a menu tab.
The password is a little annoying as you have to enter one upper case and one number,
saying that on the plus side you don’t actually have to register at that early stage.
I found the Hotels very helpful with Ratings and costs, as allows you to do a price
comparison on other websites. The site could also benefit from a separate Hotel tab.

Appendix D
Platform being tested (Desktop, Mobile or App): Mobile
Device being used (Make and Model) to access the platform: Apple Iphone 4
December 23rd
information.
Total 11
Comments:
The mobile site is an exact replica to the desktop site as oppose to being designed for
mobile.
Page loads can be slow as is responsiveness in particular on the calendar.
The load time for the Route Map was over 15 seconds as an example.
The site is very easy to navigate though and provides a wealth of information.
The landing page on the site redirects to the App.
Useful sections included special mobility assistance, flight disruption and how to check in.
YouTube online check in guide was very informative.

Appendix E
Device being used (Make and Model) to access the platform: Apple Iphone 5C
December 23rd
information.
Total 12
H3 – If I went back to look at other flight times and then proceeded with my booking; the
system did not remember me or my child’s details.
H5 – I found that this was executed extremely well. It told you it was loading with a small
plane going around in a circle. It was aesthetically sound and to the point.
H6 – If I was midway through a booking, there is no way of selecting to go straight back to
the main menu. I must keep hitting the back button.
H7 – No remember my details or autofill option, however, this generally isn’t available on
mobile devices to my knowledge.
H8 – I found that this worked quite well. If I forgot to fill in a field, it told me how many
errors I made and highlighted them in red.
H10 – The help and information is there but it is presented terribly in my opinion. It is one
big blurb of information with so many options. In my opinion, there should be one easy to
find FAQ section, one e-mail and one contact number.

Appendix F
December 23rd
information.
Desktop version on mobile
Total 22
Mobile Version
Total 7

Comments:
When you first visit the website it offers you a choice of visiting the mobile web site or the desktop
web site. The home page gives you a choice of viewing the mobile website or the desktop website.
The Ryanair desktop website via mobile phone offers a poor and frustrating user experience. The
look and feel of the page is clustered, busy and difficult to navigate.
The website is not responsive in its design. When you are looking at booking flights the calendar box
does not appear properly on the mobile phone’s screen. The user has to move across the screen as
highlighted below.
This is incredibly frustrating and time consuming.
Once you have managed to find the correct flights after painstakingly swiping across the screen you
come upon step two of booking your flights. The page highlights the cheapest flights and the
business class flights. The page is not too bad but may prove difficult to those with any form of visual
impairment as the screen text is quite small.
The third page is irksome and very busy. There are lots of options to get through. Firstly you have to
enter your passenger details.
It then asks you if you would like insurance or not. You have to click into a drop down menu which
zooms in on the page as highlighted below. This means you have to zoom back out of the page to get
continue on to the next step. You can also choose your seats on this page, check a bag on, book car
parking, rent sports/baby/musical equipment, book a transfer to and from the airport and receive an
SMS of your flight details.

The fourth step asks you f you would like car insurance. It is not displayed very well if you would like
to rent a car as you have to scroll across the screen to see all the images. If you are not interested in
car insurance, it is a straight forward scroll to the bottom of the page.
The fifth step offers you a choice of hotels and again is not mobile friendly as you have to scroll back
and forward across the screen if you are interested in booking a hotel. Similar to the previous page,
if you are not interested in hotel insurance, it is a straight forward scroll to the bottom of the page.
The sixth step asks the user if they would like to register with my Ryanair which again is not mobile
friendly as it zooms in on the text and distorts the overall text on the page as demonstrated in the
visual example below.

It gives the user the option to skip registration and proceed to step seven. Step seven is the final
purchase page. It is again clustered with information on redeeming Ryanair vouchers and offering a
chance to win free flights.
Then payment method itself is straight forward for the user and follows similar designs to other
websites in asking for your credit card details and postal address.
Mobile site
In contrast to the desktop site the mobile site is excellent. It is sleek, fast and easy to navigate. It takes
seven steps to reach the purchase page but in a much more concise manner.
Step one is to choose your flights and uses a simple and quick interface. In contrast to the desktop
version, the calendar is easy to use and is responsive in its design.
Step two offers the user the lowest fare and the business class fare which is exactly what I wanted.
Unlike the desktop version, step three asks just for your name. It not overly clustered like the desktop
version.
Step four asks for insurance and again is simple and eloquent in its design. There is no drop down
menu and it is very simple for the user to progress to the next step.
The fifth step gives the user the option to choose seats and is aesthetically pleasing in its design. It is
again simple for the user to progress to the next step.
The sixth step is straight forward and offers the user the chance to book extra bags with their flight.
Again there is no problem progressing to the step.
The final step is offers an easy way to pay for your flight and there was no issue here.
Conclusion
In my opinion, Ryanair should scrap offering the user a choice between the desktop version of the site
and the mobile version of the site. It should automatically direct the mobile user to the mobile site.
This site is far more efficient and superior in its design and concept. The only criticism I would have of
the mobile site is that can be a bit slow to upload the pages from time to time.

Appendix G
Platform being tested (Desktop, Mobile or App): APP
Can you please do the following?
December 23rd
information.
Total 13
Comments:
The App offers a reasonable user experience. The look and feel of the App are very good as
is the use of the aeroplane for page loading.
The app though can be very frustrating at times in terms of responsiveness. This can lead
you to touching the screen again if you feel nothing is happening, resulting making in
touching the screen again and selecting information you may not have wanted.
The calendar though is very easy to use and the options offered to users are limited
meaning you can purchase quite quickly.
Some of the drop down menus can be slow at times.

Appendix H
Platform being tested (Desktop, Mobile or App): App
Device being used (Make and Model) to access the platform: iPhone 5s
December 23rd
information.
Thank you for your participation.
Total: 10
Comments:
Looks good on the app home, clear and minimal.
Clear and easy path to booking a flight.
Not good when you leave the flight booking path. Impossible to go backwards or get back
to the home page.
They make it difficult to contact them.
Hard to get any help or documentation.

Appendix I
Platform being tested (App):
Device being used (i-phone 5S) to access the platform:
December 23rd
information.
Total: 7
Some comments: The design was great overall of the app but it was let down by the contact us form
which wasn't mobile optimized. This took away from the consistency of the design. I also
experienced errors putting in the countries. I selected a country but it didn't automatically update
the text box a few times – it's nothing major but something to keep an eye on. I thought the section
for help for their services and the app was organized terribly and very hard to navigate

Evaluation of User Experience across all Ryanair Digital Platforms

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