This project was completed as part of my product design course at
The Design Crew.
Problem
While talking to Airbnb hosts and guests, we identified that one of the main pain points in Airbnb's check-in experience is time.
Both hosts and guests don’t want to waste time going back and forth to agree on an exact check-in time.
Mapping out Airbnb's booking experience
How can we simplify Airbnb's check-in experience?
Role
I was one of the product designers on a team of 2 product designers.
I was responsible for designing the prototype, while collaborating with the other product designer on research, ideation, testing.
Solution(s)
We initially came up with 2 different solutions to simplify Airbnb's check-in experience:
- A concierge service for guests to avoid having to carry their bags around while waiting to check-in
- An automated check-in feature where guests could request a different check-in time before, during, or after having booked their accommodation.
We decided to focus on the automated check-in feature as it would to be simpler for both hosts and guests to use and for Airbnb to implement.
If this solution proved to be successful, it could also be applied/scaled to check-out.
Before booking
During booking
After booking
How it solved the problem
The automated check-in feature would enable a guest to rapidly request a different check-in time and get a quick answer back from the host. Therefore avoiding the asynchronous back and forth negotiation that tends to happen through messages.
UI exploration
User testing our prototype
Challenges
Usability testing helped us find out that:
- Most people want to chat directly with the host to change their check-in time
- Most people don't necessarily trust an automated service, and want a more human interaction to be the sure the host got their request
These insights helped us refine our prototype to make sure we redesigned:
- Where our check-in feature would primarily live (primarily in the chat)
- How our check-in feature worked (more human, with timely indications on response time)
Moving flex check-in into the chat
Impact
This project being part of my course at The Design Crew, we weren't able to measure its direct impact on users and the business.
If this had been possible though, key KPIs we would have measured to determine the success of the solution would have been:
- Higher conversion rate on reservations
- Higher consumer satisfaction on check-in
- Lower amount of messages about time
Learnings
This project made us realize the importance of:
- Placing a feature where users are most likely to expect to find it
- Using clear & consistent microcopy when guiding and providing feedback to users
In-app message functionality
Testing different confirmation copy
