Airbnb Onboarding Rewire

Earning trust before conversion

Problem:

First-time users often drop off prematurely because the platform assumes familiarity before trust—prioritizing transaction over orientation. The current experience surfaces dense listings too soon, without building emotional context or capturing early intent signals.

Key Friction Points:

• Information overload: New users are immediately shown listings—before the system learns their mood, style, or preferences.
• Lack of guided flow: No visual cues or narrative structure to support exploration-based journeys.
• Ambiguity paralysis: Users feel stuck between “where to begin” and “what to commit to.”
• No real-time adaptation: Static filters don’t respond to evolving user intent or curiosity paths.

Strategic Refinement Proposal:

Goal: Create a more emotionally intelligent, signal-driven onboarding path that earns trust before suggesting commitment.

1. Mood-First Entry Point

• Begin with “How do you want to feel?” rather than location/date.
• Anchor the experience in travel intention (escape, adventure, reset, reconnect) before logic.

2. Micro-Preference Seeding

• Use soft prompts (e.g. “Are you drawn to nature or cities right now?”) to capture latent preferences before showing results.
• Reduce decision fatigue and boost engagement by subtly shaping the discovery path.

3. Intent-Adaptive Filtering Engine

• Build an AI-powered filtering layer that adapts dynamically to interaction signals (scroll depth, save behavior, hesitation points).
• Surface listings that match not just filters, but emotional posture (e.g. wandering vs planning mindsets).