The New Traveler
Airbnb has redefined the way we travel, opening hundreds of thousands of homes to adventurers and building a strong culture of trust and compassion among it's users. In doing so, Airbnb has reframed what it means to explore another culture or discover another place. Additionally, now that we can see everything online, we crave something one-of-a-kind, unique, and ultimately memorable. Traveling is no longer about a location, but a lifestyle, and the modern traveler wants total and complete cultural immersion–to become a pseudonative.
Belong Anywhere
It’s safe to say that Airbnb can claim responsibility for this pseudonative-travel-movement, but the idea of "Belonging Anywhere" shouldn’t end at the doorstep of a host. That’s where Airbnb Experiences is supposed to jump-in, offering activities for guests, and a way for permanent residents to make a little money. Airbnb has already provided the location and is poised to take the lifestyle, but unfortunately, Experiences misses the idea. I decided to redesign Experiences because I believe the product has huge potential and that it aligns perfectly with Airbnb’s vision of connecting people in genuine ways.
Testing Assumptions
During the design process I sent out a survey to test some assumptions I was making about people's habits of going to events. “Belong Anywhere” should extend beyond the sleeping/staying experience, so what do people do to occupy their time? When you travel you want to hit the major landmarks, but what do the locals do on the weekends? What are the popular options? You can have a look at the results, but of the 51 people surveyed between 18 and 54, some of the main points were:
- 78% of people would spontaneously go to an event even if they didn't know what it exactly was
- Cost and Theme were the most important pieces of information regarding an event
- 75% of people would like to occasionally be notified of events that they didn't explicitly subscribe to
- Most people prefer to know the exact base cost of an event, rather than an arbitrary price range
- Most people find out about events from Facebook, local event sites, or friends
It's clear that people are interested in discovering new and exciting events, even if those events aren't specifically tailored to them. Nevertheless, most competing event applications do a terrible job of presenting events relevant to the user, so streamlining experience discovery will be one of the major design focuses.
Design Approach
While most people find out about events from Facebook or sites at home, it's unlikely they're in the same scenario when abroad. I knew I wanted to make the application as a whole extremely simple, so I restricted the content to as few pages as possible. The experiences can sit in cards on a scaleable feed that is populated in the most magically relevant way. Most of the functionality of the app happens on the back-end so the user isn't overwhelmed with information and settings.
I took elements from the main application to make it unquestionably Airbnb but I also designed it so Experiences can be standalone or embedded in the native app. I initially was worried about how to present the information in the best way, so in the survey I put a variety of event cards to test which formats people would like most, but the survey revealed that people care more about the main feature of the event than how the minor details are presented.
