How Airbnb Became a Leader in UX Design
From a small bed & breakfast opened in the founder’s rented house, to a billion dollar multi-national hospitality company — one thing that is crucial to their success has been design.
This all started because of Joe Gebbia, one of the co-founders who had a background in Design Thinking. Even though their first mobile app came out 3 years after the launch of the company, their user-centred approach helped them gain their first customers. Instead of focusing on just sales, they tried to focus on user problems and pain points, market research, and observations. This is what UX designers strive to be in their careers, however the company understood this from day one.
This isn’t the first time Airbnb succeeded because of a leader with a background in design. They are known to have hired the popular design studio — London DesignStudio for their brand design, and even launched their own internal innovation and design studio called “Samara”.
Samara was often hiring ex-Apple designers and leaders to lead their projects. Apple’s DNA was starting to seep into Airbnb’s design, and in this case, it was a great move.
We’ll see how and why all this happened through this article.
Baby Steps — Their First Website
The first designs quickly showcased the shift in direction that Airbnb had in its initial years in business. The first website clearly struggles to naturally communicate the services it provides, but the unique graphic does add a bit of character to the website. The newer website was definitely more commercial and followed certain industry standard designs.
— A big leap in the logo
The early logo was designed by Brian Chesky, one of the co-founders, and is honestly a great attempt! This word-mark was later simplified, shortening it to the name we are all familiar with. This allows users to focus on searching for a destination rather than the logo. Unfortunately, they would take slightly longer to improve their colors from the super bright Pink and Blue to the subtle salmon we have grown to love.
— Driving Users To What Matters
Understanding design patterns is very important, especially when it comes to user-centered designs. This visual heat-map clearly indicates how much focus the title commands, followed by users moving over to the search bar and taking action.
Another quite evident difference is the collection of logos at the bottom of the page. They are finally creating some credibility for their brand, which was non-existent with their first iterations.
You will also notice a consistent grid layout that helps the website be responsive, while also having a better hierarchy. They have also managed to fix the typography, sticking to 1–2 sans-serif fonts all throughout the website. It finally feels like a real company website, instead of feeling like a college project.
The World Becomes Mobile First — Their Mobile App Arrives
With smartphones becoming common in the United States, Andrew Vilcsak led the development team to create a user-focused mobile app, which was surprisingly feature-rich. Users could quickly search for Airbnbs, connect with hosts, and even book their itinerary. This app came with a mobile website update as well, and was first only available on Android.
I actually found a video of a TechCrunch interview with Andrew, showing off their first Airbnb app.
Just by the interview, one can make out how clear they were about the direction the company and their digital platforms were going in. Andrew clearly focuses on actionable design, knowing what the customers want, and balancing the host-guest relationship digitally.
– Skeumorphism At Its Core
The Android app was functional, but more than that it was well designed for its time. I noticed a consistent 3D and skeuomorphic design which was quite common at the time. However, implementation is key when it comes to following a design trend.
I personally am a huge fan of the realistic button designs and the price tag is such a beautiful touch.
After having worked for a hotel booking company myself, the app is very well structured, the prices are clear and at the forefront, there is a solid hierarchy, a good bold CTA, and easy navigation. The designs tick off most of the UX design laws and principles we’ve learned over the years.
The app does suffer from a lack of relevant data and unique layouts, but a great attempt for an app made back in 2012. They have clearly given more time and effort to what matters, instead of trying to clean up everything all at once. From what we’ve seen till now, they have always focused on iterative designs.
Their First Big Leap — “Belo”
Every company has a pivoting point while being in business for years, for Airbnb it was their great big redesign that had a true domino effect.
The “Bélo” symbol has become an icon in pop culture ever since Airbnb became a leader in their segment. Designed in 2014, this new logo would assist them in moving from just travel to other areas of tourism as well. People could openly interpret the logo (as is shown in the above image). This logo would come to completely replace the original word-mark.
Very often we see a “company rebrand” be followed by a bunch of design changes all throughout their digital presence. Their app and website made a huge leap forward, becoming much more minimal and cleaner in nature, in order to accommodate the heaps of information on screen, but to also follow the ever growing minimalist design movement.
What changed during the big redesign?
- Center aligned layouts, including text and even the grids.
- Everything is more spaced out with generous whitespace around every element.
- The salmon color is seen making an appearance in the primary buttons.
- Pushing different product offerings and inviting people to become hosts.
- The lack of content on the landing page is somewhat disappointing. They could do so much with the space on the screen.
- The new logo is being used everywhere, which definitely makes it more memorable.
Introducing Project Samara
One of the biggest moves a company can make towards a design-focused future is opening their very own design studio — Samara. Samara would be one point of innovation for the company, where they hired some well-known designers to create user-focused products.
Remember I wrote about Joe Gebbia, one of the co-founders who brought design thinking to the board? Well, he is the one who led Samara.
They had a very “lab” like approach, where they experimented constantly, even if it meant that their experiments never made it to the public. A brilliant example of this was their first experiment — “The Yoshina Cedar House”. This was exhibited, but never launched.
Airbnb’s Biggest Design News Ever
If you thought Airbnb couldn’t invest more in to design, in 2020 they hired Lovefrom, the design studio founded by the legendary Apple designer — Jony Ive. (lovefrom by Jony Ive)
For context, Jony Ive is the man who worked closely with Steve Jobs to design the iPhone, iPod, iPad, iMac and some others.
Jony took up the responsibility to grow the design team at Airbnb and to also have a deep relationship with their teams over the years. So, any big design changes that come forth from here will naturally be the contribution of Jony Ive and his team. First Apple, now Airbnb!
Airbnb Embracing 3D
Brian Chesky, the company’s co-founder published a short video on twitter (X) showcasing a few new features coming to their app. However, something designers noticed was a new approach to 3D illustrations and motion.
Apart from just teasing a new 3D style, they are actually incorporating these into their live app, like some of the screenshots below.
Is Airbnb Using A.I?
The simple answer is, Yes.
One of the first public feature powered by AI was recently updated for hosts. Hosts can now take pictures and AI will organise all their pictures for their listings in an organised and auto-labeled fashion. Honestly speaking this isn’t that big of a deal, but it’s definitely their first step into A.I..
The animation above reinforces their dive into 3D designs. The celebration animation is a bunch of 3D “balls” and confetti flowing around.
Setting Their Creativity Free
One crucial lesson I learned during my design journey, was that you need to let your creative juices flow as a designer. Bounding yourself to a job role and set tasks can make a creative job boring. To avoid this, Airbnb has actually nudged their designers to take up some cool creative projects which go beyond their expected job roles.
One such initiative is Airbnb.design which showcases some of these creative projects, along with some behind-the-scenes style blogging. They’ve also made some of their case studies live, whether it be UX research or inclusive design.
In addition to articles and case studies, their are videos, special projects, and even events announcing what’s next at Airbnb. They also have a newsletter!
In a Nutshell, What Can We Learn From Airbnb?
- Company leaders with a background in design can truly make a difference.
- If you have a clear direction for your projects, spending millions makes you billions.
- Letting designers experiment and express themselves creatively can reward the company.
- Building in public and iterating your products can help you learn while you grow.
- Innovation comes in various different forms, design can be one such forms.
