Airbnb Redesign

Airbnb’s trust system is essential to maintaining the confidence and harmony between parties in the platform. With growing popularity has come an increased amount of fake listings, unlawful guests and security mishaps. Using Airbnb’s current status, I designed new features to empower communication and trust.

Role: User Research, UX Design, UI Design

Tools: Adobe XD, Mural, GDrive, Illustrator

Team: Sole designer

The challenge

Airbnb is a platform where strangers meet to share their homes with others. That requires a high level of trust. Their reputation system is the main contributor for maintaining trust between all parties, but it still suffers from weaknesses that make it difficult for users to see the value of the platform: fake reviews, fake listings, poor customer support and lack of assistance to both guests and hosts.

Airbnb needs to refine their current reputation system to better support hosts and guests, as well as promote truthful and positive exchanges.

Understanding perspectives to define the problem

Because Airbnb is an online marketplace based on the sharing economy and acts as an intermediary, it’s vital to understand the nuances of all the parties that converge in the platform. After conducting desktop research in Airbnb’s community posts, shared comments in different social platforms (reddit, facebook…) and Airbnb’s website, I used an empathy map and a value proposition canvas to create a holistic representation of the most significant pains, gains and services.

This helped me define both the guests’ and hosts’ perspectives and visualize the way Airbnb facilitates communication between them. It also served as a guide to identify each party’s problems.

Host Problem

Reviews have a massive impact on hosts’ booking rates, so when faced with fraudulent reviews and rule-breaking guests they feel powerless. With a growing dependance on Airbnb as a means of income, hosts need a stronger support system from Airbnb that ensures a truthful review system.

Guest Problem

Guests need guidance in order to make decisions, especially when trusting a stranger. In order for them to surpass their biases they need a system that ensures enough information about the hosts and prevents safety weaknesses.

Crafting a solution

The issue with Airbnb’s trust system was obvious: negative and deceitful customers (both hosts and guests) were threatening the positive exchanges in the platform. Taking into consideration both problem statements derived from my research, I created a how might we question to guide ideation:

How might we help airbnb promote truthful and positive experiences and discourage deceitful ones?

After using different ideation and prioritization methods, there were a couple ideas that proved worthy of exploring: a messaging function for guests to talk to other guests, and a Superguest status (similar to Airbnb’s existing Superhost). I then started sketching and wireframing both concepts, and ended up with a hybrid of both.

The solution

Creating a safe space for guests through messaging

The Guest to Guest Chat allows guests to contact other guests about specific listings to know more details and dissipate all doubts they have before booking. It's completely optional to participate in, so guests are able to enable it the moment they leave a review. As an incentive, guests who use the chat will be able to become Superguests and get special perks.

Chatting with guests

Guests can contact other guests to know more about a specific stay to dissipate doubts about hosts and listings.

Discretionary choice

Guests can decide if they’re open to chat on a listing and request specific basis, when they leave a review and/or receive a message.

Becoming a Superguest

Those who use the chat feature consistently to help other guests, can receive special perks with Superguest rewards.

Rewarding good guests while keeping them accountable with Superguest Status

Similarly to the Superhost, the Superguest is a rewards system for the best guests in Airbnb. When you're a Superguest, in return for positive interactions you get perks that make your experience on the platform better.

Profile Badge

Hosts and guests will see the Superguest badge in their profile, conveying trustworthiness and experience and community engagement.

Reservation Auto-approval

Hosts have the choice to automatically approve Superguests for their stays, without waiting times or denials.

Travel Coupons

Superguests who book two or more stays a year get a 100$ coupon for future bookings, encouraging them to participate in the community.

Use the prototype yourself here.

Feasibility and impact

Because Airbnb already has a chat function and a reward system for hosts, the expansion of these to allow greater communication would help increase the level of trust between guests and hosts, making it more perfectly matched rentals and more positive experiences.

Overall, the combination of these two features would better support hosts and guests, and promote truthful and positive exchanges.

Validating the concept trough user testing

After developing a good enough idea and prototype, I decided to validate the concept with real users to ensure the original problem was being addressed, and the response showed that most of the intended was being solved. You can see the full transcript and responses here.

Increased trust

User testing showed that the project would increase trust between guests and hosts. 85% of users said they would trust a review more if it was written by a Superguest, and all users agreed that hosts would trust Superguests more.

Cultivating positive behaviors

Most users would use the guest to guest chat to both receive and ask questions, citing that it would cultivate positive behaviors by keeping hosts and guests accountable.

Loyalty growth

Given the higher trust and the new guest reward system, more guests would be inclined to book through Airbnb more often so they would obtain benefits and status.