Client

Airbnb

Timeline

2 weeks

Role

UX Researcher/Designer
Interviewer
Market Analyst

Tools

Illustrator / Photoshop
Sketch + Craft
inVision
Trello
RealTimeBoard
 

Project Brief

In this exploratory project, my team and I were challenged with proposing a market opportunity for an existing brand and shipping a design that addresses a problem we identified through research of their users and competitive analysis. 

A scrum team of UX designers was assembled to research in order to identify a potential market opportunity for Airbnb. We identified a niche market of supper clubs and dinner parties currently underserved by emerging market players.

The Problem

Social eaters have expressed interest in home cooked dining experiences. Many Hosts and Guests alike are unaware of existing niche services in connecting them, due to lack of market reach. In addition, Hosts currently have to deal with inefficient methods of planning.

How can we build a more robust and scalable service utilizing Airbnb’s extensive user base for our Dinner Party Host to engage Dinner Guests in home cooked dining experiences?

Opportunity

Airbnb has an existing trust network that cooks could tap into to find dining guests for their meals. Their target audience of people searching for authentic experiences serves the user targeted by the problem statement. Additionally their existing payment, messaging, home booking and ratings platform could be utilized to facilitate in home dining events.

Deliverables

Project Proposal | Initial Problem Statement, Target Audience, Business Background, Goals, Competitors, Potential KPIs, Opportunity

Specification Documentation | Research Insights, Task Flow, User Flows, User Journey, Design Strategy, Feature Prioritization, Annotated Wireframes, Usability Testing, Iterations, Invision Prototype, Next Steps

Stakeholder Presentation | Market Overview, Problem Statement, User Personas & Journey, Research Insights, Opportunities, Design Strategy, Usability Test Insights & Metrics, Prototype Demo, Next Steps

Discovery Methods

The Solution

Based on our user research and competitive market opportunities, we focused our overall design strategy and feature prioritization in helping our Host engage Dinner Guests, in the following areas: 

• Event creation and management platform that integrates with Airbnb venue booking

• First phase implementation on responsive web since majority of Hosts reported using desktop as main platform in planning

• Expand Airbnb’s community base in offering Home cook and Chef services

• Social media integration to extend event participants to wider social circles

Background

Airbnb is a two-sided marketplace that sought to match people that owned real estate properties with people interested in renting short-term lodging. The company was founded in August 2008 and based in San Francisco. Joe Gebbia, Brian Chesky and Nathan Blecharzyk are the founders of Airbnb.

Business Goals:

• Airbnb has a strong competitive position in a rapid-growth industry and Airbnb should continue using this strong competitive position to increase its growth rate
• To achieve market growth with an overall 80% market share from the existing markets
• To diversify in related business to develop new markets and penetrate the existing ones

Opportunities:

Airbnb has an existing trust network that cooks could tap into to find dining guests for their meals. Their target audience of people searching for authentic experiences serves the user targeted by the problem statement. Additionally their existing payment, messaging, home booking and ratings platform could be utilized to facilitate in home dining events.

Market Landscape:

Current direct competitors lie mostly within emerging businesses that serve this niche market exclusively (in the lower left quadrant of the matrix below).

Market leader competitors (in the top right quadrant) such as Yelp and Uber have a robust user base and potential to expand into this niche, supper club market however, they are unlikely to since they are either not involved in dining experiences or they do not have an existing business model that supports event management and user verification.

User Personas:

In conducting user research, we identified the following user personas for Airbnb’s Supper Club “Social Eater” market:

Problem Statement

Social eaters have expressed interest in home cooked dining experiences. Many Hosts and Guests alike are unaware of existing niche services in connecting them, due to lack of market reach. In addition, Hosts currently have to deal with inefficient methods of planning.

How can we build a more robust and scalable service utilizing Airbnb’s extensive user base for our Dinner Party Host to engage Dinner Guests in home cooked dining experiences?

Discovery Journey

Key Insights:

Competitive Analysis | The areas of opportunity for Airbnb involves it’s existing user base, security features, the market potential

User Interviews | Key areas of interest and concern for our users involved aspects in socializing, safety & security, venue options, and event management preferences and control.

Current User Journey | Major problems areas in the current process involve event management inefficiencies, complex coordination, and lack of control and customization

Competitive Analysis

• Existing User base | Airbnb has an extensive user base that utilizes their home and venue booking services not offered by any direct competitors
• Security features | Airbnb offers guest rating and verification feature not offered by any first tier competitors
• Market Potential | Airbnb does not currently provide a dinner party hosting or event management options as part of their expanded “Experiences” services

User Research

Screener Survey:

We received 19 submissions for our screener survey in recruiting participants for User Interviews and Usability Testing.

User Criteria:
• Hosts dinner parties
• Attends dinner parties
• Has rented their space out through Airbnb

User Interviews:

Our team conducted 5 user interviews with 4 home cooks that have hosted dinner parties (one of which a is a professional chef, one that rented out her space through Airbnb, also recording their experiences as dinner guests), and 1 dinner party guest.

• Social Circles | Likes to host dinner parties because of the bonding experience of sharing food
• Social Networking | Love meeting new people at dinner parties
• Security |Want more information of guests attending parties
• Food Safety | Ensuring guests of quality of food served
• Venue Options | Personal space is too small to host
• Control & Preferences | Party size, who to invite, menu options, accommodating food allergies/dietary needs, price, where to host

Current User Journey

• Inefficient Event Management | The current process in booking spaces, cooks and inviting guests requires a multitude of methods, channels and platforms
• Complicated Coordination | Communication and payment between spaces and guests gets complicated
• Lack of Control and Customization | Finding available spaces and culinary services takes up a lot of time and may not be ideal due to availability

Design Concept:

Based on our user research and competitive market opportunities, we focused our overall design strategy and feature prioritization in helping our Host engage Dinner Guests, in the following areas:

• Event creation and management platform that integrates with Airbnb venue booking
• First phase implementation on responsive web since majority of Hosts reported using desktop as main platform in planning
• Expand Airbnb’s community base in offering Home cook and Chef services
• Social media integration to extend event participants to wider social circles

User Flow

The new user flow streamlines the dinner party creation process into a “one-stop-shop” vertical process flow, where our hosts can plan with ease, utilizing Airbnb’s existing Venue booking services and now, new culinary services as an option in planning, as well as invite public or private guests.

Final Mid-Fidelity Wireframes:

Usability Testing and Iterations

1st Iteration | Paper Prototype
1 out of 4 (25%) users completed all tasks
3 out of 4 (75%) users failed Task 1 in finding the entry point to creating a dinner party

Key Insights:

• 75% of users misinterpreted the screen with existing dinner parties to attend as a venues to host dinner parties
• 75% users expected a “Create Dinner Parties” option within the dinner parties navigation tab
• 50% users were unclear if the “Publish” button would make their event public or not

2nd Iteration | Mid Fidelity Wireframes
4 out of 4 (100%) users completed all tasks

Key Insights:

• 75% increase in Task 1 completion rate after addition of “Create Dinner Party” CTA
• 50% more users expressed confusion with onboarding screen
• 75% more users thought check availability was redundant
• 50% of users still confused where “Post Party!” sends their event
• Time on task reduced by 2m 25s

3rd Iteration | Mid Fidelity Wireframes
3 out of 4 (75%) users completed all tasks

Key Insights:

• 75% were able to locate “Create your own” CTA after heavy browsing
• 100% completion rate for remaining tasks

Key Performance Indicators

25% to 75% of users successfully discovered entry point after iterations
From 65% to 95% of overall successful task completion rate in final iteration

Further Considerations

This was a very interesting project in that the opportunity seems lucrative however we struggled to define a clear solution for a primary persona since there were so many target users involved. The biggest challenge for my team and I was pinpointing the problem statement and identifying which persona would be the primary focus. We were also facing “featuritis” since we identified too many personas initially.

This first phase in research and development is a good start but we will need further research and testing before implementation. As a next step, we would go back into our user research and conduct a second round of user interviews to include more specific topics of concerns for both guests and hosts to see if we can further refine our problem statement.