Venue Booking
Conceptual Feature Integration: Book and plan your event with Airbnb
CLIENT
Conceptual design done for "Airbnb" as part of a General Assembly project
THE ASK
Airbnb would like to create a first-class means to increase the ability of event hosts and guests to find one another through its mobile app
REFINED PROBLEM
Users find the event planning process time-consuming and stressful
GOAL & TIMING
Help guests to efficiently find and book event-appropriate venues and help venues hosts find guests.
Timeline: 2 weeks
Platform: Native iOS App
MY ROLE
Research
Data Analysis
Ideation
Testing
Lead the UI and prototype Design
Getting to Know the Users
SCREENER SURVEY
We sent out a screener survey to find Airbnb users who are or had been either guests, hosts (or both) and recruit them for interviews.
USER INTERVIEWS
We decided to focus our research on guest users since they constituted 98.7% of our 99 responses. We interviewed 9 active Airbnb users to learn more about how they plan and book events and their experience with Airbnb.
What Did We Learn?
USER INTERVIEW INSIGHTS
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Our users were planning for a very specific type of event (i.e.: Professional or personal)
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Users wanted more venue information available online
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Users wanted the ability to visualize venues without visiting them (Virtual Tour, 360˚ photos/videos, space layout)
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Users wanted to track venues they like (Bookmark/Favorite)
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Users wanted the ability to efficiently search and find suitable venues (Filter by interests).
Problem Statement
Users planning events are busy and usually search for venues online or get recommendations from people they know. Users find the event planning process time-consuming and stressful.
How might we help users to efficiently find and book event-appropriate venues?
Ideating Solutions
DESIGN STUDIO
This is a resourceful method that generates design ideas through rapid sketches, iteration and collaboration in a group settings. We ran two rounds of Design Studio and at the end of the process we listed all the potential features that could solve our personas' pain points.
Feature Prioritization
MoSCoW
Once we had the list of potential features, we prioritize which ones were going to be included in the app using the MoSCow method. We believed the following features could potentially solve our user’s problems.
Building & Testing Prototype
ANNOTATION
1. Added venues on app's home screen (Entry point)
2. Promoting venues through sponsored stories (Business goal)
3. Robust Filtering
4. Allow venues find guests based on similar interests (Business goal)
5. Venue Promotion (Business goal)
6. Bookmark
7. Detailed list of amenities and attributes
Usability Test
We tested the paper prototype on two users, but we realized major iterations were needed to make the experience easier for the users. These are the results after conducting 5 additional tests, with some iterations in between:
TESTING RESULTS
[7/7] Found a venue they liked [Task 1]
[6/7] Bookmarked it [Task 2]
[7/7] Contacted the venue host [Task 3]
[6/7] Clicked “Book Now” instead of “Contact Host” to contact host
[7/7] “Scrolled” through multimedia gallery
Key Design Decisions
USER & BUSINESS GOALS
DESIGN SOLUTIONS
Help users to efficiently find and book event-appropriate venues
Include venue details/amenities/extra costs as well as price range shown on venue page. Robust filtering options
Allow guests to remotely visualize venue space, and save time
Provide 360º multimedia, online walk-through, guided tour, Space Layout Map
[BG] Allow venues spaces to find guests based on their shared interests
Guest give permission to be contacted by venues based on their search criteria
[BG] Allow venues to promote their spaces
Promoting venues through sponsored stories. Feature promoted venues at the top of results page
