The Challenge

Identify booking flight process pain points.

The first impression from the Raynair app is quite positive. It looks and feel modern. It seems that booking a flight process is quite smooth. But it's still not perfect. So, I highlighted some UX Pain Points for me as a user.

1. Agressive Offers

As soon as a user lands on application, their customer experience begins. The initial search process must be as clear as possible. In case of Ryanair app everything starts with advertising. Even on the initial screen for me, as a user who faces the task of booking a flight, the search button does not have enough weight, the promo is distracting. Screens examples:

This continues at practically all the steps of the booking process. Booking and paying for a flight is a big deal for a lot of customers. There are too many offers that distract from the main task.

The customer experience is not only limited to the search and booking stages; after sales is a key process if airlines want to build long-term customer relationships. The option of seat selection, adding luggage, or investing in partner companies for amenities like insurance or rental cars should be offered without spamming your customer. But this extra options have an overwhelming presence at Ryanair's App and some steps seems too busy because of it.

2. Search

Ryanair put a slider on the flights feed page that users see once they've specified destinations and dates. A slider captures a few dates and calls it a day. A slider is space-effective. It simply doesn't provide enough perspective to find the lowest fare. For me, as a user it's not very comfortable. I need to go back to the calendar to check out other dates to see if I would have cheaper options. I would like to have a chance to compare prices. Or at least I want more flexible search. Also, if I change my Departure day, on the Return day screen I can't see for which day I switched, so I need to go back or memorize it. Screen example:

3. Sign Up

As a new new user, before the payment, to continue booking, I have two options: Sign Up or Log in. This step converted to me as a pain. Especially, on the stage with picking up a password. Ryanair issued an error "Password is invalid" but did not explain why. For a less experienced user it may not be obvious that App requires letters, digits, low case and upper case. Screen example:

4. Microinteractions & Error Preventions

There are no warning windows in the App at all. For example that booking progression will not be saved if I go back to the previous window on some steps. And I would have to start everything again.

In search results, I can see the duration of the stop, if there is a connection. If I want to check the overall length of the flight I need to go into the details. But in my interest is to see the opposite or even all the info.

Also, the App does not have enough microinteractions. For example, when I enter data, I see all the fields, even empty ones. But I can not select dates before I select the destination. The Let's go button looks active, but I can not go to the next step without filling this screen. Also, at the stage of the personal data input, the button Continue looks active, but in reality it is not.

Improving

Now that we know what could be improved, we have to set our next steps.

Now, as a UX specialist, not as a user I would go deeper throw the app again using some Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design. And I would gather more information.
Then, I would move to the Research step.

I would prepare a survey distribute it among multiple groups of people. With purpose to determine the basic 'pain-points' not only for me but for other people as well.

Also, I need to research key competitors, such as EasyJet, WizzAir, Vueling, Lufthansa etc. And put an eye to the best airlines in the world like Emirates etc.

Then I would move to User Flowchart. For example (now I will show you some simplified flowchart):

Now it's time for the first step to help me outline screens and visually imagine it.

Now, some simple wireframes. I will try to save current app visual language and style. But I will change some UX writings to make it more friendly. Here are some wireframes where I wanted to show more interactive process, easier onboarding, and price graph where you can compare prices (you can get there from calendar or from search feed page, I didn't show it here because it takes too much time to redesign the whole App :) ).

Task 3

Choose 1 screen from the booking process and redesign it. Feel free to propose any newness. If you consider that the current UI components could be improved, feel free to change it using your criteria. Your proposal should be a clear UX improvement and a visually appealing UI.

I've choose screens from wireframes I did before.
Some of them to show interactive steps, but it still needs an animation.