Airbnb Experiences are exciting activities people can join. Before joining an experience, people searched the reviews for reference and validation. Still, Airbnb’s review display was text-heavy and long, distracting potential guests and reducing joined guests’ willingness to write a review. However, people are familiar with the posts and stories featured on social media.
Comeshare is a redesigned review experience in the Airbnb app, turning guests into promoters, and allowing them to share their adventures by shortening text, and focusing on images, and videos. This system is adapted to what people are used to becoming a gallery for other guests to enjoy. Comshare brings the conversation back into Airbnb, increasing visitors' curiosity and raising booking rates.
There are five features: discovery, exploration, validation, sharing, and evaluation, that follow the app visitor's journey from becoming a guest to sharing and evaluating the experience.
Review features will appear on the main activity page to increase engagement.
‘Community’ becomes a new menu bar item and a space that displays all reviews and stories, leading users to look beyond the star review.
Each review and story are stored on the activities page as gorgeous moments enlarging the opportunity for the activity to be seen.
Sharing experiences shouldn't be complicated. If guests don't feel like typing, they can simply share a story as a review.
Once the guests participate, the app will let them know to rate the experience. They can save time by sharing videos and images instead.
In 2016, Airbnb started offering an "Experience" service, which connects local tour and activity providers with travelers who want to experience unique adventures they can't book anywhere else. It became a new channel for people to find their sense of belonging. However, from my survey, only 9.5% of people booked experiences. In interviews, people mentioned relying on guest reviews as great validation.
According to the infographic analysis from Invesp, 88% of consumers trust online reviews just as much as personal recommendations. However, reviews can be biased by personal preferences, creating a gap between expectation and reality. Plus, due to the time-consuming nature of writing a review, it can be hard for hosts to get enough guests to write about their experience.
According to Facebook's survey, 67% of travelers use Instagram to find inspiration for where to travel to and reviews for what to do. My survey also showed 81% posted their travel experiences on social media, and Instagram got a higher percentage among all social media choices.
I discovered that using a social media-style post as a review makes it easy for guests like Emily to share their experience through photos and videos, giving potential visitors a range of cool visuals to check out.
By adopting features similar to Instagram and other popular social media, people will spend less time typing out a review. They can share their experiences with just a few words and visuals, increasing their likeliness to write one. Reading reviews will become enjoyable and seamlessly link to the booking page without external app transitions.
I used the opportunity map and business canvas to understand the current business structure. Then, I validated assumptions and gathered inspiration through surveys and interviews. Based on my findings, I created a persona and journey map to better empathize with user needs and improve the overall experience.
Airbnb partners with many companies and shares its success with stakeholders, which helps the company grow faster. They also created a market for activity sharing that fits with their strategy and deepens connections.
Airbnb's exclusive housing listings attract more guests, but when competitors offer unique housing, it can lead to price competition. Unfortunately, post-service conflicts between hosts and guests can also eat into revenue.
Guests often worry about discrepancies between photos and reality when booking, but social media sharing can bridge the gap and help them connect with hosts and other guests.
After gathering user feedback, I created a journey map to pinpoint pain points, identify design opportunities, and develop strategic solutions that address users' needs and concerns.
The user flow basically has 3 phases - choosing an experience, during the experience, and after the experience.
When I made the business canvas, I tried to include all the costs and possibilities I could think of. But with a complex business like Airbnb, there are just too many hidden costs to cover everything.
Before I made the journey map, I had tons of ideas and couldn't decide which solutions to include. But once I finished the map, I could pinpoint the pain points and choose features that fit the strategy.
When you go from wireframe to prototype, the result can change a ton. The wireframe is typically rough, but when I made the low-fidelity prototype, I had to adapt it to match the current Airbnb app. I had to decide what to keep and what to replace, like whether to add a new button for a function. After a lot of thinking and tweaking, many low-fidelity features got moved or thrown out in the final prototype.
