mediajunk

First off, let me state that I'm a fan of Ryanair. I admire Michael O'Leary. He has revolutionised air travel in Europe, making its cities and regions more accessible. Moreover, he has dramatically reduced the cost of flights, while increasing punctuality of departures and arrivals.

So how do I feel about the Ryanair website? Until recently, I have found the site to be both useful and usable. However, Ryanair has (deliberately, I suspect) introduced deceptive practices, which could be mistaken for poor usability.

Lengthy Terms and Conditions

The Ryanair site makes it easy to choose the flight dates and times I want. Next, I am shown the "Total Cost of Flight excluding handling fee (if applicable)".

I tick the "I have read the terms and conditions box" -- which very few users will ever read. Those who follow the link to Ryanair's terms and conditions will be put off by the text length: approximately 5200 words!

The Old Bait-and-Switch

The sneaky part comes on the next page, when I am presented with the following form to fill:

The first thing I notice is that I have to enter my first and last name. Next, I see that I am being asked how many bags I want to check in, and to the right of that I see that there is a price of "0.00 EUR". I've heard on the news that Ryanair is now charging passengers for checking bags into the hold, so I'm not surprised by this.

However, since I am going on a very short trip, I will not be checking any bags in. From the "How Many Bags to Check in?" drop-down, I try to select "0 bags". To my surprise, it's not that straightforward!

If you look closely at the image above, you'll see that I have chosen "0 bags - Online Checkin/Priority Boarding" (sic), the only option with a zero. To the right of that, you'll notice that the price has changed to 6.00 EUR.

Pocket-picking Disguised as Poor Usability

And here's the rub - most people won't notice. I consider myself to be an experienced internet user. Indeed, I dare to call myself a usability expert. But I failed to spot this "hidden charge" first time around. I'm sure Ryanair would argue that it's not a hidden charge but, well, pull the other one.

As it happens, I like the idea of priority boarding, but I would prefer to be offered it clearly and up front, not in this underhand manner.

I believe that Ryanair is deliberately employing "poor usability" in order to con inexperienced users into paying these extra charges. Bear in mind that 98% of Ryanair flights are booked through its website. Go on a Ryanair flight and look at the people around you: they are not the "tech-savvy" demographic. Rather, you'll see passengers of all ages and all walks of life.

Ryanair's business model is to reduce airfares while generating profits through ancillary revenues. O'Leary himself has stated that in the near future, European flights will effectively be free, with revenues coming from other means. I'm all for that - so long as those other means are fair, not foul.

How to Remove the Priority Boarding Charge

There is a way to remove the 6.00 EUR priority boarding charge, but users hurriedly filling out the form during their lunch break certainly won't notice. Towards the end of the text that has suddenly appeared below the "Confirm Country of Residence" drop-down, the word "Remove" is a link.

Clicking it produces a pop-up message that warns me: "You have chosen to remove Online Check-in/Priority Boarding. Are you sure?"

Of course, many inexperienced users will not be sure, and they will select "Cancel" at this point, leaving them with the charge. I wasn't sure what clicking "OK" would do, since the form had been so unintuitive up to this point.

As it happens, clicking "OK" finally generates the simple "0 bags" option (without the "priority boarding" tagline) that should have been available in the first place. The price alongside the drop-down changes to 0.00EUR.

Users Don't Read Instructions; They Muddle Through

Users won't read the text and try to figure it all out, because that's not how users proceed through websites. As Steve Krug puts it, we don't read figure out how things work, we muddle through.

I believe that many users won't even notice this surcharge and, among those who do, many won't be able to figure out how to remove it. "Ah well," they'll say, "it's only 13.50." But these users are being ripped off. Many of them won't even avail of the online check-in facility. I was on a Ryanair flight last weekend and was one of only five passengers who had checked in online, and thus boarded first. (The online check-in facility was free when I booked the flight; Ryanair has only introduced a charge for this facility in the last six weeks.)

How to Remove the Travel Insurance Charge

Ryanair deliberately, I believe, conflates the "Choose your Country" and "Do you require travel insurance" questions. In any case, I would never want Ryanair's insurance; I certainly don't need travel insurance for an overnight trip from Dublin to London.

In the images above, you'll notice the "Confirm Country of Residence to purchase Insurance" line and, beside that, a drop-down pre-populated with your computer's location, in this case "Ireland".

If you look carefully, you'll see the line "If you would prefer NOT to purchase travel insurance simply chose No Travel Insurance Required in the drop down menu" (sic). This text is not next to the relevant choice (where it should be); there's a sizable chunk of whitespace in between.

Anyway, a little mooching around in the country list drop-down reveals that "No Travel Insurance Required" is one of the options. Hmmm... never heard of a country by that name before. Choosing it removes the 7.50 surcharge.

Even then you're not out of the woods! When you've filled in the rest of the form (your address details etc.) and clicked "Continue", Ryanair makes one last desperate bid to squeeze that travel insurance out of you:

Enjoy Your Flight

Unfortunately, there is still no way around the outrageous 5 euro VISA card charge per person per flight- not per transaction!

Will I still fly Ryanair? Yes. I just wish they'd stop trying to con me. And hopefully I've helped a few other people avoid being ripped off. That 13.50 I've saved you should leave you with just enough to buy a coffee, Mars bar and scratch card on board.

Bill Thompson has an entertaining diatribe against web 2.0 in The Register (via Nick Carr).

I agree that web 2.0 is over-hyped (hey, even boo.com is relaunching and it's registered to a Dublin-based woman; make of that what you will).

However, there seems to be a sense among traditional software developers, Thompson among them, that the pendulum has shifted too far in favour of interface designers.

But Ajaxian interface techniques are not always popular with interface designers and usability experts.

Many so-called rich internet applications (RIAs) are not cross-browser compatible. They are a nightmare for visually impaired users who rely on screen readers, and a pain in the neck for millions of internet users in developing countries where broadband is, ahem, a pipe dream.

Interfaces that update on the fly cause usability headaches for interaction designers for one simple reason: with RIAs, the web page doesn't refresh.

As counter-intuitive as it sounds, page refresh is useful; it signals that the application is responding to your actions. And, until all sites are RIAs, users will expect page refresh. This was exactly what Vikram Goyal discovered when he decided to try an Ajaxian search interface out on some users:

I was happy with the result and so was my manager and we decided to show this to the users. They hated it.

So, while the basic infrastructure that websites are built on may well need to be remodelled, reconsidered and upgraded, we're still a long way from achieving usable interfaces as a standard.

In the initial dot com boom, most sites were heavy on graphics, scored low on usability and accessibility, and weren't browser-compatible.

When the dust settled after the bust, most of the gold-diggers got out of the web industry, leaving those who cared about the web as a medium to develop the standards and best practices that have since become accepted, at least in the web design industry.

Gradually, then, we saw the prominence of usability and accessibility, the emergence of XHTML and standards compliance. Web design company used phrases such as "clean, elegant, professional websites" to lure clients. (In other words, chunky blue buttons on vanilla backgrounds.)

The days of using graphics-heavy sites that resembled little more than online brochures were gone, as designers realised that users hated them (they took too long to download and typically weren't very interactive or intuitive).

These days, however, I am noticing a new shift -- towards graphic-heavy websites that meet usability and accessibility standards.

Take for example the new site that promotes Ireland as a tourist destination to British holidaymakers, www.discoverireland.com/gb/

This site has visual flair. The graphics, while optimised, are still a little heavy for dial-up users, but are no problem to those with broadband access. The gamble, and it's a calculated one, is that broadband penetration in Britain has now reached the point that sites can once again be graphically rich, although this time around they must be designed using XHTML and CSS, and they must comply with standards and best practices.

There are still problems with the new DiscoverIreland website, in interation design and in browser compatibility. However, I think the gamble has paid off. The site is certainly visually impressive, and uses the medium well (I particularly like the way that the background overlaps with the foreground).

I expect we're going to see many more sites like DiscoverIreland emerge over the next 12-18 months, as another internet cycle gets underway?