Airbnb new feature: swapping houses
As a new UX UI designer, I challenged myself and decided to add a new feature on a very successful application: Airbnb.
As we all know, it is one of the biggest American companies.
There are 150 millions users in over 100,000 cities.
Every second there are 6 guests checking into an Airbnb listing and every night there are over 2 million guests staying in one.
There were 91 million visits on their website in only one month last January 2020 and 50% of them were through the mobile.
Users spend an average of 11min 31 second on the application.
This company seems complete however I tried to think about a new feature that could increase the number of users and reinforce its value of “living like a local”.
Market research
Airbnb has 3 different types of competitors:
- Strictly swapping houses companies such as Home Exchange and Home for Home.
- Comparison platforms like Booking, Expedia, tripadvisor.
- Hotels
Nowadays, Airbnb’s positioning shows that it has the strongest brand identity and it is very life experience oriented. So I wanted to reinforce this positioning to reassure its users.
I also did a features comparison of these companies to know where the opportunity could be.
I realised that Airbnb is more focused on the owner whereas others companies are more focused on guests.
New feature: swapping houses
The idea was to make the owners the guests. Create a community of owners where they can swap their house with each other at the same time or/and at different moments.
Swapping houses is a trend that is more and more important in the vacation industry. Indeed, there is a swap of houses every 4 minutes!
Also, 50% of airbnb users want to replace the traditional hotel stay because they are looking for cheaper prices. Most of them say that they choose Airbnb because they feel home-sharing is a better way to take care of the environment and because they want to live like a local.
And the research based on interviews confirmed this trend as they are looking for more flexibility, a more human touch and a cheaper way of traveling.
The idea was validated by this data and it seemed to be a good idea to develop.
How does this feature works?
Like most of the companies specialised in swapping houses, this whole system could work based on a point system. Here I have called it the “airpoint”.
An owner can create an account on Airbnb as usual and publish information about their house.
If they want to enter in the circle of swapping houses, they have to pay a fee and then they will receive some airpoints.
Two owners will be able to swap their houses without using any airpoints if they exchange their houses at the same moment; or they can use some airpoints to stay in another house, even if this owner will not come to their house. In that case they will give these predetermined airpoints to this owner. The larger of more luxurious home, the more airpoints are needed. Also if another owner will come to his house he will receive airpoints.
Mid-fi prototypes and usability tests
First of all, I added this new feature in the existing airbnb application user flow. I integrated this “swap house” option in “type of property” which is in the filter on the results page.
Users only need to enter their location, dates and number of guests to get the result. Then they have to go to the filter to find “type of property” in order to choose the entire house or just a room and if they prefer Airbnb luxe or a superhost.
Here you can see how it looks like in mid-fi.
I have asked 6 users to try this prototype and simulate a swapping house to go to Barcelona few days in July with another adult.
The result of this first usability test was not so good even if all of them liked this feature.
They couldn’t find the “swap house” button right away. And even when they found it in the filter, they wanted to have this option before arriving at the results page.
Through my usability tests users told me that they go on the application only to check some information before they book from a desktop.
For this iteration I decided to use the same desktop user flow as it is different from the application. I added the complete research bar like the one on the website, just after choosing the location. Here is what it looks like:
The result of this test was much better! They found the “swap house” button directly. They thought the process was easy and they still liked the idea of this new feature.
Learnings
This was very interesting because I discovered many habits from Airbnb users:
- About WHO they are: there are 2 types of users, the owners and the guests. All of them liked the new feature of swapping houses and wanted to use it except some guests that had never rented out their homes because they don’t feel safe about having strangers in their house.
However, some guests that don’t want to rent their house were interested in swapping their house on airbnb because this company has a quality guarantee for them.
“I have more trust in swapping houses than renting my house and especially on airbnb there is good security for me”.
- About HOW they use Airbnb: they go on the website to reserve a house but they use the application to check information (before or after booking).
Next steps
Short term, I would need to iterate the prototype and make usability tests again and I would communicate about this new feature.
Midterm, it would be interesting to measure the success or failure of this new feature by analysing the number of subscriptions in the “swapping houses community” and through a satisfaction survey.
Long term, if this feature is a success, it would be possible to develop it even more by adding a “caring option” when swapping houses to take care of plants, pets or more.
I hope you appreciate this new feature. Feel free to contact me if you have any suggestions regarding this article, I will be glad to answer.
Thank you for reading!