Dark Patterns, The Bad UX : Ryanair

Ryanair is Europe's largest airline, a low-cost carrier that serves?over 40 countries?in Europe, North Africa (Morocco), and the Middle East (Israel and Jordan).

Despite having over 160 million passengers a year, their website and app have always been hit or miss, with confusing language, a carnival of upsells, and an emphasis on scarcity.

Adopting a scarcity approach as an up-sell strategy is not a crime, but it forces clients to go for the paid options by creating a big "What if" in their minds.

Today we're looking at a small example:

While booking the flight, the passengers can go with the free option, a 1 small bag. Instead, Ryanair is pushing for the paid option, calling it "Priority & 2 Cabin Bags".

What's wrong with that? Well:

1. If you look closely, you'll see they added?a condition?in the free option: 1 Small Bag that?must?fit under the set.
2. Adding gas on the fire by showing an automatic red tooltip/overlay with a disclaimer telling the passenger if their bag is big, they'll be charged a penalty fee that is?more expensive than the flight ticket.

These tactics leave the passenger with the free option hostile to the idea that if my bag doesn't fit for an x reason, they'll have to pay the penalty at the gate, which is 4 times more expensive than the upgrade option. In other words, forcing them to upgrade to worry less.

From a selling perspective, it's one of the old selling tricks. Still, from a UX "ethical" perspective, that would be considered a Dark UX pattern that focuses on getting more money from the users' pockets rather than guiding and helping them, which is supposed to be the role of UX in any website or platform.

To sum this up, Ryanair's UX approach in a nutshell:

The good:

?? A clever strategy to increase the upsell - They are doing it so well.

?? Using tooltips and red-colored text to create FOMO

The bad:

?? Their tactics are considered Dark UX patterns forcing users to go with the options they want them to go with

?? Red-colored text is often used for critical, important messages. Instead, it is used to scare users that the free option is penalized, and they have to go with the upgrade option to worry less.

?? Creating doubts in the users' minds (especially first-time passengers), asking themselves, "What if my bag can't fit." Imagine the hassle for a family of 4.

?? Forcing users to go for the paid option

?? The scarcity tooltip is not visible when you pick the paid option :D

P.S:

1. Ryanair remains the best airline in Europe; no one can deny that it broke the monopoly by offering affordable tickets.
2. If you are facing a dark pattern, please coordinate more with the sales/marketing team to understand the business models. If that is the only revenue generation machine, then and only then minimize it as much as possible.

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