Airbnb
Airbnb is a school project enhancing the sharing experience by helping families and friends collaboratively document, organize, and share their travel journeys with a larger community.
CONTRIBUTION
UX Designer
DURATION
2 months
TEAM
UX team at University of Washington
Problem
How might we empower Airbnb users to share and plan their travel by offering collaborative tools like shared wishlists, group itineraries, and digital travel journals, fostering connection and seamless coordination?
Solution
Group travel feature that lets users plan their trips together and share their experiences live
Design Process
Analyse
01
02
Design
Survey
Persona
Journey map
User flow
Information Architecture
Visual Design
-
Provides families and groups of friends who travel together a collaborative way to document, organize, and share their travel experiences.
-
The booking can be paid through separate links by groups traveling together through a shared payment option
-
Converts their shared family trips into immersive stories about culture and destinations by combining photos and/or notes.
Goals
01
Learn about stories, favorite them, and save them, discuss them, and connect safely with others
02
Describe the cultures and destinations you visited
03
Tell a story about your trip experiences and memories
Research
We surveyed 20 Airbnb users to gain deeper insights into their travel behaviors, preferences, and pain points throughout their journey. This process helped us identify critical problems and areas for improvement in the user experience. To analyze the data effectively, we organized it into categories based on recurring patterns and themes. Supporting quotes from users were included to provide context and validate these themes, ensuring our findings were rooted in real user experiences and perspectives. This approach allowed us to focus on solving the most relevant and impactful challenges.
Key Insight
Our main insights from the survey
During and after the trip, participants write trip journals or share photos
1
People enjoy reading other people's trip journals
2
Trip journals with photos are preferred by them
3
How Might We...
Record people's trip experiences in an easy way and transform them into immersive stories about the culture and destinations.
Persona
Based on our interviews, we created two personas. Travelers fall into two categories: those who travel by themselves, those who travel with friends, or those who travel with family. The people they travel with influence their travel experience and behaviors.
Information Architecture
Through information architecture we understood how users navigate the site in detail and how they take each step. We could also organize the information on various steps and divide it between two of us moving into the design.
.png)
User Journey Map
Based on the personas, I and my other teammate created a consumer journey map that reflected the goals, feelings, and concerns of the user. It helps us understand the steps involved in booking an Airbnb room and looking at other people's experiences and what actions, feelings and thinking goes through this process.
By examining the journey map, we were able to locate and identify the points of crisis within the user's journey. Solutions for these crisis points are the most important to incorporate into our design.
Key Insights
From the map, we highlighted these specific pain points to focus on once we started designing:
There is not enough information to help her decide which destination is best for her and how to choose it
Unsure what to expect when she arrives at the Airbnb place in more details from people who went there.
Traveling with friends, she's worried if they will all pay her after she pays for the whole trip she doesn't want to pay for the whole trip by herself
User Flow
User Flow #1 Exploring the Journals
User Flow #2 Explore on Airbnb
User Flow #3 Trips
Final Design
JOURNALS
View other travelers' updated photos and comments on their travel experiences and destination stays
LIVE STORIES
It allows people to upload their photos or videos live like Instagram stories on the destination they visited, mentioning the place so that other people can find it. The stories stay online for 48 hours and are updated with the most recent ones.
SHARED PAYMENT
Booking payments can be split between travelers. If you choose the “devide between others” option, you can share the link so they can pay their share.
.png)
Learning
-
Maintaining discipline and meeting deadlines played a pivotal role in advancing the project and bringing it to a successful conclusion.
-
Break down deliverables into manageable components and adhere to them, ensuring adherence to the schedule and completion of assigned tasks.
-
Understanding the significance of prioritizing users and their requirements, objectives, and input as the focal point of the design process. Additionally, consistently taking a step back and contemplating the specific user issues that need resolution during the idea generation phase.