Case study: Designing a feature for Airbnb

A UI/UX Case study on designing for a ‘Guest Preference’ feature on Airbnb

For a brand that has really disrupted the hospitality industry in the most innovative way, this project (case study) was a prompt given by Artiom Dashinky, which looks at developing a feature for Airbnb that allows hosts to request the preferences of their intending guests improving their experiences and thereby creating opportunities for additional services.

My Role — User Research, Sketch, UI/UX Design

Prompt (Problem) Statement by Artiom Dashinky

Team — The team that worked on this project consisted of one Product Designer (myself), and a User Researcher (Adebisi Johnson)

Process — We utilized Google Venture’s design sprint method to ensure that the solution we’d come up with was grounded in research, aligned with the core objectives, created with passion, and delivered with precision so that the end-users would be well delighted.

Design Sprint

Objective — For us to solve this, we agreed that the solution should be a part of Airbnb and not a stand-alone product. We also streamlined our process to create an experience that:

• allows Airbnb guests to state preferences in advance to their host during the booking via the ‘Tell me your preference’ button
• allows hosts to turn ‘On’ or ‘Off’ the ‘Guest Preference’ feature to toggle ‘On’ or ‘Off’ the ‘Tell me your preference’ button on their Contact screen
• allows the hosts to limit the preferences to the number they can cater to — and which they would

Day 1 — Understand

On reading the prompt, there were a few questions that came to mind.

1. Is this a problem worth solving?
2. What are the most effective methods of increasing customer satisfaction?
3. What are the benefits of knowing guests’ preferences?
4. Do hosts who are aware of guests’ preferences show more success?
5. What are we optimizing for? What does success look like?

We re-framed our insight statements as How Might We questions to turn those challenges and questions into opportunities for design. How Might We questions gave us the perfect frame for innovative thinking

1. How might we craft a seamless experience for both the host and guest?
2. How might we moderate the requests from guests?
3. How might we validate the feasibility of a standalone product?
4. How might we improve accessibility?

Day 2&3— Sketch & Decide

I used mobbin.design, to get an idea of how the current Airbnb design looked so as to know where my sketch would fit.

I sketched out various solutions for the proposed screens and made decisions on which would best suit the guests as well as aid the hosts in not going beyond their capacities.

Starting from the Contact page, we inserted the ‘Tell me your preference’ option on the guests' end. We also inserted the ‘Guest preference’ option in the host’s profile.

Sketch of Tell me your preference on Host Contact Page

Sketch of Guest Preference screen on Hosts’ end

Day 4— Design

Host

• The ‘Guest preference’ feature was added to allow guests to pick from a curated list of preferences suggested by the host that he/she can cater to.

Host’s Profile with link to Guest Preference

• The ‘Preference limit’ option allows the host to put a cap on the number of preferences they can handle at any time. The Toggle switch gives control to the host, making them decide if they want to turn on/off preference for the guests.

Guest Preference screen

• After clicking on the ‘Guest preference’ in the profile, the host is allowed to pick a set of ‘Suggested preference’ from an array of auto-generated preferences the options they can cater to, and save them for the Guest to see.

Suggested Preference screen

Guest

• For these screens below, we assumed a scenario where the Host turns ‘On’ the Guest Preference, sets a limit, and allows the Guest to pick whatever they want from the auto-generated list from the Airbnb system. They click on the ‘Tell me your preference’ button to choose from the auto-generated list.

Tell me your Preference screen

• Below’s a ‘Select Preference’ screen showing some already-selected preferences a Host is willing to fulfill for his potential Guests’.

Already-selected preferences by Host

• Below’s another ‘Select Preference’ screen showing an unselected set of preferences (but with a preference limit) a Host is willing to fulfill for his potential Guests’.

Unselected preferences by Host

Day 4 — Test/Validation

Test

To test what we had done, we conducted initial validation sessions with two participants (a host and a guest) that fit into the target audience of this experience.

Scenarios

• Would an experience that informs you about your guests’ preferences make you serve them better? (Host)
• Would you be able to fulfill special requests from your guests, so as to increase customer satisfaction? (Host)
• If given an opportunity to tell the hosts about your preferences on Airbnb, how would you feel? (Guest)
• Would you patronize hosts that don’t give you this opportunity on Airbnb? (Guests)

Results

• The host believed knowing the preferences of his guests will help him stop assuming, and offer them more personalized service.
• When we showed him the new experience, he loved the fact that he could suggest some special addons, which he could afford.
• The guest, on the other hand, was optimistic about the experience but stated that he would still patronize hosts who turned off preferences.

Takeaways

There is no doubt that the team behind Airbnb has spent countless hours making what we see now. They conducted lots of research and iterations. They have access to a huge amount of data that tells them how users behave and what they try to accomplish. The features and how they have been laid out must have the reasoning driven by those research and data. Besides, the company has its own agenda and goals to achieve.

The amount of research we did within a limited period of time is fairly small compared to what the Airbnb team did. So, we don’t claim that every decision we have taken to improve the experience is better than what exists now. We absolutely think a lot more research, usability testing, and iterations can be done to improve the Airbnb experience (and what we have put forward); after all, design is a continuous process!

It would be very interesting to build this feature, A/B test it to see what works and what needs improvement. With these mockups (and the timeframe we had), we could only do so much.

Retrospective

Completing this project using Google Ventures’ design sprint process allowed us to get hands-on experience working in an agile setup where deadlines and short turn-around times are very common, while also allowing us to demonstrate our ability to work on agile projects.

Collaborators

Image of Collaborators