Ryanair, Analyzing and improving the search experience.

Introduction

Welcome to one of my favorite projects, and it is not only because I learned a lot while developing it, but also because thanks to this work I got a job offer, so let's talk a little bit about the main objectives and my approach.

Objectives & Challenges

The objective was basically to analyze from a UX perspective a search flow of Ryanair, a low cost airline group, very famous in Europe. Having as main challenges to propose at least 3 product improvements, and of course, the most important and exciting, to use the UX tools that best fit my context.

Understand

As an initial step, I concentrated on understanding the entire search flow, all its possible variants, and how these influenced the different results, obviously all this focused on finding weaknesses, where we could improve, as well as strengths to maintain.

Pre-Study Findings and Lessons Learned

The first finding I found was the lack of round-trip dates at the beginning of the flow. At first I was puzzled, and although later when filling in the initial fields the other fields emerge, I think it is something to keep in mind in the future of this research.

Another discovery I found was the fact that there is no section in the initial flow to add a class (Economy, premium, executive...) is something I have seen in other flight purchase platforms, in this case it would be extremely interesting to do a usability test in the future to know what other users think.

A great idea came up: imagine if Ryanair incorporated a function that goes beyond, a functionality that is more than a plus, that makes a difference. Add the ability to book not only the flight, but also the accommodation. This feature would not only optimize the hotel rental experience, but would solve a major challenge faced by travelers, which is how to manage flights and accommodations.

Before starting with the research, and to complement the previous analysis, I decided to make a heuristic evaluation, this helped me a lot to find any usability problem that the flow may present. The evaluation was developed according to the functionality of the product, that is to say, without going deeper into the other elements than the search flow.

I found that in general all the Nielsen rules are fulfilled, for example, rule #1 Visibility of the system state, which I feel is fundamental in this type of flows

Rule #1 Visibility of the system status is fulfilled

Among other things I found that one rule was broken, rule #3 Give the user control and freedom. After researching it, I realized that at a business level, it is necessary that some functionalities limit the user, so as not to hinder the general search flow.

Research

My objectives with this research are varied, but concrete: to test my initial assumptions seen above and at the same time eliminate any bias, on the other hand is to carry out a thorough evaluation of our competition. Why? To understand what our competitors do to solve the same problem we face, and to look for gaps and opportunities for improvement in order to create and achieve that valuable added value for our users.

Method Definition:

To validate my hypotheses and findings I will use a UX survey, having already a solid idea of where to start working, it was a pretty clear option. On the competitive analysis side, I will do a Benchmark, with the clear objective of collecting the best of the competition and see what they are doing wrong to improve it. To complement both, I will probably do some online research focused on reading comments from different communities to have a much broader and more solid spectrum.

Quantitative Research:

I am aware that it would have been better to do an open survey, but in my context and with the little time I had, the most efficient thing to do was to focus on doing a more closed survey with the specific purpose of finding out if my hypotheses are correct or not.

Key Information. The survey confirmed that:

• The vast majority of users would like to have the option of dates as soon as they enter the search flow.
• The majority of respondents would like the initial flow to include the option to choose class.
• The new functionality of bundling the hotel accommodation option with flights is quite interesting for the majority of potential users.

Benchmarking

As I mentioned before, we will use this research tool to analyze and understand how other companies in the industry solve this problem. I will use the platforms that have more comments and reviews to be able to work not only under my experience, but also under data, which are essential at all stages (design, testing, development and implementation).

Interesting findings and validations

This research got me quite excited, as I found different improvements (already validated, and that are working) that I could add in a final wireframe, and at the same time I also managed to validate again my previous hypotheses.

https://www.despegar.com.co/

Analyzing Despegar search engine, when delving into its interface, I noticed something interesting, the option of dates and classes come from the beginning of the flow, which confirms our previous hypothesis. On the other hand, they have the Flight + Accommodation option, a functionality very loved by Despegar users from what I could see in some sites, so I thought this could be a great feature for Ryanair users.

https://www.lufthansa.com/co/es/homepage

According to my research, Lufthansa is one of Ryanair's direct competitors, they also have the date and class fields in the initial flow.

The vast majority of industry platforms that I have researched, welcome us with all the fields, it is an aspect that gives control to the user, and is extremely important (rule #3 of usability heuristics), So no doubt along with the option to add the accommodation with the flight, will be some of our star proposals.

Usability Testing

With the data I already had at that time would have been enough to start implementing and proposing new improvements for Ryanair's search flow, however, having already designed an interface I can afford the luxury of doing a usability test, in order to discover and find possible improvements, and undoubtedly complement my previous research, giving it a more open and qualitative approach.

As I wanted the test to be more subjective and give me more personal information to complement what I already had, the goal was that my users performed the specific task of navigating through the search flow, and in the course of this go asking them about what they thought, if at any time something generated frustration, if it was easy or not to understand the navigation, in short analyze the Customer Journey, and try hand in hand with users to find possible improvements.

A Great Finding

I am very excited to say that, thanks to the usability test I was able to find a great improvement, that if I only did the closed survey I would have missed. At the beginning a problem arose, it was that users did not understand a part of the flow, specifically where you choose the airport, 4 of the 5 users failed to understand the operation of this section, so the user was blocked and in some cases deviated from the flow.

Solution

When I understood the problem, and with the feedback and results of my test, I was thinking about the best way to find a solution to address my problem (taking into account my context). Then I remembered that in my previous competitive analysis there were several different options in the search and airports section, which I had at hand and could investigate, to extract the differences and present them to my users, to see if by chance any of them gave a solution to my problem (I feel it is important to "own" the problem, to feel it, both as a UX designer and as a user).

This is what some of my users had to say about the problem:

I presented several interfaces, and the one that undoubtedly stood out the most among our users was the LATAM Airlines search bar. At no time did the users feel lost or blocked, so I quickly knew it was a winning feature, and one that I would definitely include in my list of proposals.

https://www.latamairlines.com/co/es

Proposals List

Throughout this exciting journey, full of discoveries and learnings thanks to all the analysis and research carried out, having known first hand what is the problem I am facing, I have enough clear and solid data to start making design proposals:

• Add round-trip dates, or one-way dates if applicable, at the beginning of the flow (without the need to complete the above steps).
• Add a section to select the class at the beginning of the flow.
• Add a flights + accommodations option, combining both.
• Make the search bar for the destination part, to be written, so that when typing the available options (countries, city and airport) are shown. In the same way, if the destination is not found, an alert modal will be displayed.

Low Fidelity Sketch

As the Ryanair interface already existed, we only asked for a low fidelity sketch with the new proposals applied, all according to the UX studio previously developed. This was the result:

What I Learn?

I really like to review everything I learn when I finish a case study, I think this is very useful to be constantly improving, so the following are some of the most important learnings:

• One of the previous knowledge that I applied in this case study was the fact of knowing how to adapt to the project in which I was working, this implies knowing what the tools are and how to apply them in our context. This really helped me to save a lot of time and in general to optimize the results I obtained in the whole case.
• This is one of the cases in which I have participated where I have realized the great importance of user testing, which is fundamental among many other things to have real data to design.
• It is always important to take a look at our competition, whether direct or indirect, as always to see which elements can inspire us to improve our product and which to avoid.