Airbnb, you will never get lost again [Case study ]
Who has never faced this problem on the last meter of his airbnb? And if we could avoid this decay?
This case study was done in pairs during a Product Designer training at “The Design Crew”. The study was conducted during 8 consecutive Saturdays following the different processes of Design Thinking.
GOALS
For this research our goal was to put ourselves in the shoes of product designer of Airbnb, we had to analyze how to improve the experience of check-in while staying within the scope of the application.
Our goal was to improve the satisfaction of users of the application when they book a trip.
1) EMPATHISE ❤️
We started from the following problematic « how to improve the check-in experience of Airbnb ». As the subject was very broad, we analyzed the different stages of the check-in by realizing a user story with assomptions.
User interview 🔍
In order to guide our research, we was gone to interview Airbnb users in a Starbuck, in order to discover their pain points.
We defined a panel of questions to collect their experiences, we wanted to ask questions for which users could respond very openly and tell us their travels. The objective was to listen and discover and at no time did we talk to them about the experience of check-in.
Type of questions :
- How often do you use Airbnb ?
- Why do you use Airbnb ?
- What is your best Airbnb experience ?
- What is your worst Airbnb experience ?
- Answer with the “5 Why” and open conversation.
Answers 👀
As the interviews progressed, we noticed the same painpoints, they mainly concerned access to housing, which was considered difficult, poorly indicated and poorly documented. Mainly when the trip was abroad, the difference in culture, language, writing and lack of network increased the difficulty of access.
A failed experience because of access ?
In Japan, I entered a place that was completely forbidden, in addition I had my shoes on, it was an affront. I ended up there because the informations was not clear.
Mathieu A.
Or a good experience because it’s was easy ?
I loved my trip, our host was great ! I got lost on arrival, he picked me up by scooter at the train station, it was really nice of him.
Marie V.
Personas 👧🏻👦🏻
We selected two types of travelers for our study. People who travel for their holidays, mainly abroad. And people who use Airbnb for short periods in their country (professional, occasional event …). Some prepare their trip in advance and anticipate difficulties, others travel at the last minute and hope not to encounter difficulties.
How does it work now
We did some research on the different ways to find accommodation, using applications or indications left by the host.
In Airbnb, the host has the ability to write himself a route (text), with public transport, access by highway, airport ect … Others go so far as to draw a map of transportation or access. But not all hosts do it, our research has shown that in some cases it is not enough. We isolated the problem in the last meters.
2) DEFINE 🎯
We have gathered our testimonials, we found that users had fewer difficulties to reach the housing (> 500 meters) but that it gets complicated in the last meters. We concluded that some accommodations were more difficult to access than others. It’s like when you have a pizza delivered to your home and you know the delivery man is going to have trouble getting to your door, generally, you leave information for it to reach your door. We decided to reformulate our problematic.
“How to improve the way to find your lodgment”
The job to be done 🚩
When I book an Airbnb, I want to be able to access it easily, without a network and without contact with my host. So, I can use the application to retrieve access information.
Contraints ⛔
- Keep the scope of Airbnb (do not recreate the wheel)
- Respect the Airbnb Design principle (Unified — Universal — Iconic — Conversational)
- Easily integrated to Airbnb (time / cost)
Proof of success 🏆
We have defined indicators that will make it possible to check if the solution works
3) IDEATE 🚀
To better understand the problem we made a mind map of all the problems and possible solutions without taking into account the constraints, “Think outside the box”.
Mindmapping 💥
Crazy 8’s ✍🏻
Several ideas emerged, map features, creation, selection of mode of transport and actions (downloading, export, sharing …) with the possibility of finding this map easily. We also imagined features to contact the host depending on the context (low battery, late, lost).
We isolated the fact that users use their own localization application, so, we quickly gave up. Same for solutions to “contact your host”, which in the absence of networks might not be relevant.
One solution seemed conceivable, offering a step by step guide with images to help users in the last meters of their trip. As the citation says “one picture is worth a thousand words”
4) PROTOTYPE 💻
We added several entry points.
- In the preview of the reservation, below the map.
- In the agenda, in first activity.
- Notification ~30 minutes before the time of the arrival.
- In the validation email of the trip.
5) USER TEST📲
We solicited 5 user to test the proposed solution. For these tests, we put the users in condition.
“You arrived at Tokyo airport an hour ago, you used an application or a plan to get near your home (> 300 meters), you are now in the street of housing, you must now enter . “
User test review
- 3 users had trouble accessing our guide. We realized that each user had his preference of use, some use the timeline, others the email or the summary of the reservation.
- 4 users find the wording difficult to understand, they do not expect to find our guide with these words.
- 2 users have not seen the entry point in the summary of the reservation (under the map).
- All 5 users found this guide helpful and easy. The image + the text is for them the best way to find ealsy the entrance and do not do mistake. They said they were ready to find it in the application.
- 3 users have found that the rating request comes too early, they have not arrived yet that they are asked a note = intrusive. We mentioned they did not even read what they were asked to evaluate.
6) ITERATE AND ENHANCE➰
Host flow
We also imagined the flow of the host. We added a screen in the flow of creating his announce, with a simple question “It is difficult to access to your front door ?” We added a tutorial to explain what “difficult to access” means.
If the host responds “Yes”, he can create his access guide now or continue later. Else, he switchs to the next step.
For each step :
• A title
• An indication of time or distance (300 meters, 4 minutes…)
• Description (of the step)
• A photo (with the possibility of adding an arrow and turn it)
This format also makes it possible to create indications whatever the context. If the host wants to specify that a door is difficult to open, always closed, if he wants to take pictures of the keys for each door, signs and bus stations …
7) CONCLUSION
The user interview allowed us to quickly detect their painpoints, even if we did not expect it, they all encountered a problem of access to their home, which has more or less spoil their booking experience.
We chose to respond to this problem by a solution that seems simple and relevant, we have taken each case users, each time, if they had used this feature, they could not have been wrong.
There is one last problem, which is the users themselves, “will the hosts be able to produce relevant guides?”, With good photos and good indications (precise and clear). We did not have time to test host …
I had a lot of fun doing this project, we had a lot of surprise during the first test users, we thought multiple entry points would be easily found by users. It allowed us to rework and explore new solutions to access the guide.
Thank you for reading !
