This project has taught me the importance of constantly evolving and adapting by analyzing and implementing new features in a product already launched on the market, in order to improve the experience of current and future users.As designers, it is important to keep up to date with new trends and have the ability to listen and empathize with our users in order to identify new opportunities and provide solutions to the needs and expectations that arise every day.

Final Thoughts

The next steps I would take to keep developing this project would be: I would include more filters to refine the search because in the research phase this was a very common pain point that I found among users. And then, I would conduct another usability test to see how users interact with the Trip plan feature while tasked with refining and filtering their Airbnb search for their specific needs.

Next Steps

I decided to create an empathy map based on the real thoughts, feelings, and perceptions of Airbnb users. This helped me identify specific "touch points" that I addressed during the ideation phase.

Empathy Map

In order to prioritize the most important features to integrate into the group trip category, I created a feature roadmap that includes the major steps needed to achieve the business and the user goals. These are some of the key features to incorporate during project design and development.

Feature Roadmap

Creating a user persona helped me to step into users' shoes and empathize with them, understanding their needs, experiences, behaviors, and goals. To create my persona, I relied on preliminary demographic questions from the survey and interviews.Let's meet Angie! She is a millennial who works remotely as a consultant and loves to travel and explore new places. She likes to set a budget for each trip as she has other financial responsibilities as well.

Persona

Business Goals

Business-User Goals

Developing a user experience vision requires a broader view that includes business and user goals. To make sure the new feature I am developing is both usable and sustainable, I established business goals and summarized user goals from my user persona and empathy map.

Project Goals

User Goals

Gathering data from the empathy map and my persona, I needed to understand where this flow fit within the information architecture. I started drafting a sitemap to illustrate the navigation through the application. Creating the sitemap helped me show the relationships between the different pages and organize my thoughts in order to keep consistency within the current Airbnb application.

Site Map

Sketching out an idea of how a user may benefit and use the new feature on the Airbnb application, gave me a better understanding of the user’s environment before starting to design. Through this storyboard, I wanted to represent and emphasize the common patterns found during the research phase of Airbnb users.

Storyboard

Define

#FF5A5F

Airbnb is an online marketplace that allows users to explore and book rental homes and apartments. Their peer-to-peer business model allows customers to book accommodation directly from property owners. I started my case study process by researching the market to get more data about their competitors. As a direct competitor, I decided to include Vrbo, which also has a peer-to-peer business model, but its big difference from Airbnb is that this application only offers independent vacation homes. It typically doesn't offer "shared" spaces like private rooms or more unusual options like campgrounds.On the other hand, Airbnb is also facing a lot of competition from Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) where customers book accommodation directly from the hospitality business, which is why I decided to list Booking.com as a direct competitor. As Indirect competitors, I reviewed websites like Tricount and Wanderlog, which offer a group booking and planning experience.Through the competitive analysis, I wanted to identify necessary feature aspects, potential pain points, and the improvements that can be made to the Airbnb site by adding a new feature. Some of the research results are shown below:

Competitive Analysis

Airbnb has already worked on bringing collaboration into the application by introducing wishlists where users can invite other people to add and edit accommodations on the list. However, this option does not allow users to chat and make mutual decisions, split the reservation payment, and receive the reservation details individually.I started the research phase by exploring the Airbnb app and website in a deeper way in order to learn a little more about each of the features it currently offers. After identifying Airbnb's current features, I wanted to learn a little more about current Airbnb users in order to understand their needs and frustrations when using the app in general and when planning a group trip.

Research

Research Goal

Research Methodologies

Research Objectives

As Airbnb is a well-established website with many users, I started my UX research by focusing on the customer. I was curious who is a typical Airbnb user and how is their experience with the website or mobile app? The first step to start answering these questions was to conduct a survey and share it across my peer network. I collected a total of 20 responses from people who were largely in the age group of 20–29 years old. From this, I was able to get an understanding of how people book trips, as well as identify a few different pain points. Some important insights I gleaned from the survey were:

Surveys

Empathize

Since I'm working on adding a "Group Travel" feature to the Airbnb website and app to improve the experience for users traveling with friends or family, in addition to surveys, I wanted to get some feedback from frequent travelers who book their accommodation through Airbnb. I conducted 4 interviews with people who are in the age group of 28 to 33 years old. I categorized the questions into 3 general sections: 1. Demographic and psychographic information (age, gender, occupation, how often they travel, and who are they most likely to travel with).2. Details regarding their personal planning process (what is their planning process before a trip, how is the planning different when they are planning a group trip, which apps or tools do they use to communicate with the group members, how do they agree to choose the ideal accommodation, and how they pay as a group for the expense).3. Details regarding their experience with Airbnb (how is their experience while booking with Airbnb, memorable experiences, what are the challenges of planning group travel, are they aware of the Airbnb wishlist feature, and what device do they use more to search and book accommodations).From this, I was able to get an understanding of how people plan and book trips, as well as learn about their motivations and different pain points they face when booking with Airbnb.

Frustrations

Motivations

Needs

User Interviews

Based on what I learned in the previous phases, during the ideation process I focused on creating possible solutions that would help travelers when planning their group trips in an easier and more exciting way. At this stage, the main question that crossed my mind was: how to integrate this new feature into the Airbnb app while making sure my solutions fit into the existing brand ecosystem?

Since the research results indicated that the majority of Airbnb users use their phones to search and book accommodations for their trips, I started sketching the preliminary idea to integrate the new feature into the Airbnb application on mobile devices. I decided to add tabs to the travel section as it can be a great user interface control element that can greatly improve the usability of mobile devices. By doing this, users can quickly switch between travel plans, upcoming trips, and previous reservations.

Sketches

I created a user path reflecting the following potential user scenario: Angie and her friends plan a group trip to Pennsylvania, and must agree on where to stay and pay the bill in equal amounts separately.Below is the flow of the first task that combines the aspects of creating a group trip and making a decision as a group. The complete task flow can be viewed by clicking the button below.

Task Flow

Ideate

After having a visual direction of the layout, I started by wireframing my sketches incorporating the colors, icons, typography, and other elements that are part of the established Airbnb brand. To keep the consistency, I did some research about the Airbnb UI kit, and I created a document that helped me as a guide during the design and prototype phase.

UI Design

I had several ideas on how to integrate this new feature into the current application. The creation of a user flow helped me understand the paths that users would take when interacting with the new group trip feature of the Airbnb application and trying to complete a task.In my first approach, I tried to add the group trip feature in the bottom navigation bar, but according to the material design specification, it is bad practice to use more than 5 menu items for the bottom navigation view. In my second approach, based on the interviews and surveys I conducted during the research phase, I realized that many users are not aware of the wishlist feature, which made me think I could possibly replace that section with the group trip feature, but what about the user who travels alone?Then, I came up with the idea of adding the new feature to the Trips section allowing users to plan trips, check their upcoming trips and previous reservations. With this in mind, I created a user flow to better explore those scenarios and be able to identify possible pain points to quickly find a solution before starting the wire-framing process.

User Flow

Currently, the application does not have a collaborative trip planning experience that would allow a group to plan, decide, and book a trip together within the app. This results in one person having to deal with the entire payments and reservation process. As a result, that person becomes the singular point of contact, and the itinerary of the trip isn’t easily accessible to all members of the group.

Challenge:

Airbnb is an American company that operates an online marketplace for lodging, primarily homestays for vacation rentals, and tourism activities. Based in San Francisco, California, the application is accessible via website and mobile app. Airbnb does not own any of the listed properties; instead, it profits by receiving commission from each booking.

Project Scope:

Role:

Add a feature to the Airbnb application where users can create a group trip and add their choices to a wish list accessible to all members of the group. In addition, users will be able to create polls with their group members to decide where to book, as well as split the bill according to their preferences.

Solution:

Time:

Figma, Whimsical, Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator

Tools:

After I finished designing the hi-fi pages, I linked those pages using Figma to move on to the next phase: usability testing.
Testing the prototype helped me see how users interact with the new features added to the Airbnb page from their mobile phones and identify areas for improvement in the prototype.

Mobile Prototype

Prototype

Overall, the usability testing went very well. All users were able to complete assigned tasks without any problem. They mentioned that they had fun creating the polls and voting to choose a stay.Additionally, during the payment process, the users appreciated having the option to pay in equal parts or to be able to pay by percentages established by them, since they sometimes divide the bill into different amounts. They feel it would be great if Airbnb implemented these new features within the current app.Participants also mentioned that the interface is very similar to the current Airbnb interface, so the process was very intuitive and there was no confusion when completing any of the assigned tasks.

How did the test go?

Test

To discover what users think about the new features added to the Airbnb application, I needed to conduct a usability test. Before doing it, I drafted a plan to define the goals, methodology, and tasks that users would be asked to complete using the high-fidelity prototype. User tests were done via a combination of in-person as well as video calls (using Zoom).

Airbnb

Integration of a new group travel feature