Airbnb
UX Redesign

This is a personal Airbnb UX redesign project that aims to empower groups of friends to organize their trips collectively within the current Airbnb App

At A Glance

My Role

Researcher

UX designer

UI designer

Approach

Interview, User Story, Competitive Analysis, User Flow, Low-fi prototype

Context

personal project

2 weeks

Inspiration

My trip to turkey inspired this project with my friends, and the overall experience was wonderful, but there are still some problems that annoyed me every now and then.

We need to constantly jump between apps(Airbnb, Instagram, and Google) to plan our trip together, causing important links to get lost and storing information on different platforms. Since one person in the group made all the bookings, he had basically most of the detailed information about the reservations, I had to ask him frequently about when and where we will go all the time. lastly group trip involves complicated spending that is hard to follow and track.

With these problems in mind, I wonder if they happen to me or if they are universal experiences/pain points for the majority of users and if there’s a universal need for a group trip planning function within the Airbnb app

Hypothesis

Separated

Tools

hopping between different apps is inconvenient

Information

Asymmetry

only one person has the access of information of reservations

Budget & Bill Management

complicated spending that is hard to follow and track

🧐

Before any design...

before I get too excited about designing the new solutions, understanding what the current design is like and deconstructing the existing functions and user flows becomes the priority.

Wishlist

Search for stays and experiences based on the specific location, dates, number, and type of guests
Filter the items shown on the page
Flexible search without information of destinations/ dates/ guests
Recent searches store information about user's past searches and link to result page

add an item to an existing wishlist
a pop-up notification shows the item is added
create a new wishlist and name it while adding an item
Share the wishlist for view/edit

Trip

browse details of upcoming trips/past reservations
An entry of the search function while there’s no reservation

🔎

❤️

🧳

How do users plan their trips?

In order to find out if my hypothesis is right (or wrong?) I began my user research with in-person interviews with 5 people and talked about how they plan their group trips and what their problems are

figuring out how users plan their trips and what tools they use in their own way is a good method to understand what function is needed and expected for a group trip.

Miro

co-editing
chat
itinerary timeline & activities mapping
budget
notes

PDF

itinerary timeline & activities
only for view

Google Sheet

co-editing
itinerary timeline & activities
locations mapping
budget calculation
notes

Notepad

itinerary timeline & activities
locations mapping
only for view

Key Insights

🧑‍🤝‍🧑👫👭

Group Dynamic and roles

There's a typical group dynamic involving two main roles which are leaders and followers. leaders tend to plan the trip proactively while followers follows what the leaders ask them to do

the leaders usually make the majority of the reservation and payments, they become the only access to the information of reservations causing information asymmetry

Similar process

🔨

The process of the group trip planning is highly similar:

1. talk about everyone's preferences (places to visit, stays, activities, and budget)

2. collect a list of possible stays and activities

3. the leader makes a draft of the itinerary and everyone discusses the itinerary

4. if there's a major difference of opinions, vote and decide

5. the leader refines the itinerary, makes the reservations and everyone involved splits the bill

6. plan for more activities based on the budget and the remaining money

📱

Platform hopping

Group planning involves different apps (Messaging app, Airbnb, Spreadsheet, calculator, and note apps ). This makes discussions hard to follow and the itinerary not easily accessible. Travelers prefer to only use mobile phones once on route and access information while at the airport, car rental company, or hotel

Budget & spending

💰

when going on a trip longer than a week, users will set a budget for the whole trip for different categories like transport, accommodation, and food...

the bill splitting is tricky, inconvenient, and time-consuming, users need to note down all those group payments involve only some of the members, to later split the bill

Persona

Young people who use Airbnb and like to go on short trips with a small group of friends

Lisa

22-year old, student, London

#Leader

She is the leader of the trip planning and thus dedicated and involved in every stage

Gather everyone’s opinions（budget, type of stay, amenities）
Search for information on stays events and transport
Collect most of the possible stays, experiences, and attractions
Take some notes for each item
Design itinerary draft
Organize discussion and refine the itinerary
Make reservations and split costs

Needs

organized
proactive

Attributes

Drive the group to make decisions
Make sure the plan works for everyone
Track the spending and the money members owe each other

Goals

James

23-year old, junior software engineer, London

#Follower

He doesn’t necessarily need to get involved in every stage but attend key events as a part of group decisions

Needs

Collect possible stays, activities, and attractions
Join the discussion and give opinions
Vote for options if there’s a major difference
Look at itinerary details
Note down their spending and transfer money

laid back
casual

Attributes

Goals

Go to places and do things he likes
Don't need to worry about reservations and transport
Travel within the budget

User Needs

Easy communication

communication tools for sharing wishlists, discussions, and decisions on the planning

Symmetric information access

everyone has the access to information on the wishlist listings, itinerary details, budget, and messages from hosts

Budget & bill management

set budget for different categories
view the left budget
split the bill after the bookings are made

Seamless experience

discuss and plan their trip within fewer apps as possible instead of platform-hopping

User Story

To break users needs down to specific actions

When i'm...

I want to...

so i can...

Situation

motivation

expectation

searching for and collecting list of stays and things to do

viewing the collection of listings

designing the itinerary

there's major conflict/too many options

planning for more activities

making the reservation

after making reservations

see all of the listings in one place

know others preferences

know how others opinions and attitude towards the listings

know how others' opinions and attitudes towards the itinerary

see the locations of activities and tourists attractions

discuss and vote

view the budget and the remaining money

note down who's involved in the payment

inform others to split the bill

view them more efficiently all at once instead of looking for it from chat history

find places that suit everyone's needs

focus on the popular ones

refine the itinerary based on everyone's opinions

figure out the route and the transportation

make decision that satisfy most of the members

select affordable activities that match our budget

track who owes me money and how much

get money back

How might we
empower groups of friends to organize their trips collectively within the current Airbnb App?

Designing For Solutions

Integration

Design a feature as the integration of a communication app, calculator app, notepad, and Airbnb wishlist, It gives users a better seamless flow of the app

Create a group trip

create a group trip storing information of locations, group members, and dates

search for stays and experiences based on the locations, group members, and dates of the group trip

Shared Wishlist

explore stays and experiences, then simply shared them on the wishlist accessible to everyone

leave a comment on the listings or give a like to show their attitude

Easy communication

have a discussion on anything within the group chat and create a poll while there're too many good options

Shared itinerary

design a shared and visualized itinerary by adding stays, experiences, and transportation

simply add plans from reservations of Airbnb

Shared budget

set the shared budget according to different categories

a quick option to split the bill while making a reservation

Split the bill

add expenses to the group budget , choose from past orders then split the bill with chosen people

all bill splits will be tracked and made into a debt summary where users and view who owe them and how much

👇 Try out the prototype

other ux works

Airbnb UX Redesign