Tl;dr - We mocked up what a deeper social experience on Airbnb would look like! You can check how our 2nd Place entry in the Adobe Creative Jam.
On April 24th, 2020, my friends, Renaise and Tommy, invited me to join them on an Adobe Creative Jam. A short design sprint would ideate and mockup a solution to a corporate sponsor's design prompt. This writeup will serve as a small little explainer behind the motivations of why we picked the feature that we wanted to design- and the opportunity that presents to Airbnb as they scale forward to becoming a public company.
For those interested in the design process, you can view our process deck here.
Airbnb is one of the few products that could be a positive-sum for all involved. By allowing hosts to monetize their spaces to get extra income, some have built small rental empires and craft unique memories for those who stay there. For people looking for a different way to travel, there lie enjoyable stays for all on the platform. To make this work: Airbnb offers a unique value proposition as a two-sided marketplace focusing on trust. This strategy was able to enact a profound shift in consumer behavior.
Airbnb Co-founder Joe Gebbia notably stressed in a TED talk that design is instrumental to Airbnb's success
The product its self is deceptively simple. A user will find a section of the site dedicated to searching via locale, allowing for filters like price. On the other side, a portion of the product is focused on hosts that enable them to manage their listings. There is a lot of business logic handled by the company in pricing, reviews, and discovery that can have essays dedicated to the intricacies of how Airbnb operates.
I usually approach a novel space that I haven't thought deeply about to naively list the intuitions around the problems of the market. Doing so can help us initially capture the market problems that Airbnb might face. In business, it is my opinion that any issue not solved by you is money left on the table for your competition. There are caveats to this line of thinking- products must balance features and execution.
First, the team and I started crudely listing issues that might arise in the journey map between guests and their hosts.
Guests
Hosts