Helping business travelers finding the perfect business lodging
[Project 4: Add a Feature] | 5-Days Sprint| Individual | Ironhack São Paulo
1. Overview
Airbnb wants to incorporate a new feature to its mobile app to improve the experience of business travelers, seeking to share accommodations with their coworkers to maximize social interactions and minimize costs while reducing the bureaucracy and eliminates the annoying process of checking refund notes.
Disclaimer: This project was not solicited by Airbnb, I am in no way affiliated with them nor did I obtain any data through them. This project also happened prior to COVID-19, and the world has changed much since then.
2. Problem Statement
Co-living is a new trend arising in the hospitality sector of business travel. Airbnb needs to create a new service to compete with the increasing number of competitors offering long and short stays in the lodging market. There are significant changes in the lodging industry with new hospitality startups and many hotel properties are now starting to introduce new home-like experiences, offering more co-living spaces with specialty amenities. What Airbnb really provides that sets it apart is that feeling of home while you’re on the road.
Therefore, how can we improve the digital experience for business travelers during the booking process and provide them a better stay experience where they can focus on what really matters?
3. Research
In order to create a new digital feature for the Airbnb App, I first had to understand why business travelers book hotels versus Airbnbs, and what Airnbn would have to do to stay competitive.
The idea is not only to convince already Airbnb users to continue booking their services while offering better business amenities but also, increase the number of new clients!
I wanted to validate the increase of business travelers opting to book business stays with Airbnb rather than hotels and the reasons behind it.
One of the main features Airbnb has is its ability to offer its travelers experience. With its new “Experiences” feature and listings in unique settings around the world, Airbnb is able to offer activities and experiences to the business traveler such as adventure travel opportunities, cooking classes, history tours, and more. This can be a great opportunity and value-added amenity to offer travelers as the desire for “bleisure” travel (combining business travel with personal travel) continues to increase. It can also extend beyond corporate transient travel to corporate retreats, extended stays, and relocations.
3.1 Surveys
To better understand the users, their habits, and the problem they face within traveling for work, I conducted quantitative user research to better understand the users’ habits and frustrations. This research was done via Google Forms and involved 49 business travelers.
Conducting a survey of active travelers to learn their lodging preferences may help determine whether or not to consider adding Airbnb as an option for corporate travelers. If a significant portion of employees expresses interest in Airbnb. A combination of factors including budget airlines and ride-sharing has made traveling more affordable than ever. Nowadays, there are solutions for people trying to save money thanks to the rise of the sharing economy, particularly websites such as Couchsurfing and Airbnb.
I needed to validate if business travelers would be willing to share a house with their teammates when traveling in groups, rather than booking an entire place for each traveler, I sent out a survey asking:
- Do you love living like a local when you travel to a new destination for work?
- Do you need to feel pampered and have access to customer service 24/7?
- When you are on a business trip, do you visit the town?
- Are you traveling the world on a tight budget?
- Are you traveling with a large group when working?
- Would you share the same property with or teammates?
Of 49 respondents:
3.2 Interviews
After analyzing the surveys, I wanted to dive deeper into this data and understand why people are willing or not to share the same Airbnb property with other teammates.
Then, to dive deeper into this data, I performed qualitative research, interviewing 5 business travelers between the ages of 25–35 who travel often for business and had stayed in Airbnbs.
I choose 5 people between the ages of 25–35 who travel often for business. I asked them to explain the pros & cons of staying in Hotels versus Airbnb and what their feelings are towards sharing the same property with the teammates. Below are some of my findings:
4. User Audience
With all these insights on my hands, It was necessary to synthesize information. So I created an Affinity diagram to organize and group the insights that were fundamental to understand the user audience and create the personas.
There are three user audiences (and user flows) that would be using the Airbnb Business Platform:
- The homeowner/ tenant
- The employer who will create an account for the entire corporation
- The employee guest
However, due to time constraints, I focused on employee flow. Analyzing quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews, the defined the audience:
Business travelers who need to travel in teams and perform several internal formal & informal meetings while abroad. They are on a budget.
4.1 Personas
I decided to reproduce a scenario mentioned during the interview process as several people had lived a similar experience.
Then, I moved on to create personas — fictional characters based on my research to represent different types of users that might use Airbnb, as well as their goals, motivations, frustrations, and skills.
4.2 User Journey
To empathize with the users’ frustrations and identify exactly where their problems occur while traveling for work and staying in hotels for business, it was time to visualize the contexts in which they typically go through. To do that, I created a storyboard for each persona and was able to quickly identify their main pain-points. To help me explore those pain points even further, I decided to create a journey map to visualize the process that each persona goes through to accomplish their goals.
A small start-up needs to travel with a team of four to another country for a meeting conference where the goal is to attend the conference where they need to present as well as prospect new clients. This kind o business trip will require the team to meet frequently to discuss conference insights as well as making upgrades in their own presentation.
This step allowed me to understand the users’ motivations, pain-points, and context of use:
5. Ideation & Brainstorming
After identifying the problems, it was time to create solutions and generating as many ideas as I possibly could in the shortest amount of time. I started by scoping out hotel sites and making observations on which services were offered that Airbnb was lacking or needed improvement.
The thought behind the brainstorming ideas was to analyze what kinds of services other lodging businesses offer to provide a stress-free experience for their guest.
- Airport Shuttle
- Concierge to assist guest with local information
- Housekeeper/ Laundry
- Business Room
- Breakfast/Mini-fridge
- Restaurant/Bar on-premises
I used a Lean UX Canvas to help me map possible solutions for new features Airbnb could add to the existing product.
After understanding the scenario, I brainstormed a few features that Airbnb could offer to solve some of the pain-points and used prioritization methods to decide what could or could not be included.
With all the offer possibilities, I added an Airbnb Business Trip category in their existing filter:
Business Travel Ready: specific amenities that the traveler may forget to include while traveling, such as USB, HDMI cables, electrical adapters, printer/scanner, office supplies, as well as TV, self-check-in in case the traveler arrives at non-business hours.
Coffee Break Kitchen: that can be filled with pre-ordered snacks, water, and coffee.
Maintenance: basic laundry items
Add Service: services that will be charged extra fees and need to be coordinated with home-owner, such as short commute transportation (bikes, scooter…), shutter from/to airport, the homeowner to be near premises as a scheduled concierge as needed, as well as pre-ordered grocery prior to guest arrival.
The reason to create a few filter categories is to provide the guest with the best experience, so they can focus solely on their travel purpose, stress-free; without many severe changes in the existing platform.
6. Information Architecture
With all the insights and information collected, it is now time to think about the actual product and how to add the Airbnb Business feature.
I also asked the people who I interviewed to perform a set of tests in the existing Airbnb App while explaining their thoughts out loud to see if I could identify any existing pain-points with the existing app before making modifications. This was done remotely via Zoom.
Some pain-points:
- Overwhelming of repetitive information (property description, filters)
- Too many house options on the landing page prior to the search
- Typing the location of the search bar will send you to hundreds of options and then the user would have to go over the filters after looking at the overall options. Can we simplify this into simpler steps?
At the core of the user’s pain points, was that the layout of the app was too repetitive and too many options. So, after ideation, I decided to dive into the information architecture of the Airbnb App.
I started by mapping out the current sitemap to fully understand the hierarchy and navigation structure. Then, I understood where to place the new feature.
6.1 Card Sorting
Then, I used card sorting techniques to organize, reorder, and group the content into different sections, ultimately coming up with a simplified and more intuitive version of the sitemap.
It made sense that there were 3 main categories of groups to separate the group of business travel reasons:
- Properties that can offer spaces for team meetings and stimulate collaboration
- Properties that can offer spaces for a team gathering, and celebrations, such as corporate events or parties
- Properties for those who travel often for remote work and need a space to be creative.
This step was crucial and really allowed me to review and restructure the app in order to increase the visibility of the key features, eliminating the ones users did not use, and improving the overall navigation.
6.2 Wireframes & Mid-Fidelity Prototype
I started this phase by creating a digitally structured version of my hand-sketches on Sketch. The idea was for these wireframes to provide a clear overview of the page structure, layout, information architecture, functionality, and user flow. Then, I built a prototype on which to test my ideas and performed usability tests with 5 different users, giving them tasks and encouraging them to “think aloud” and speak up whatever came to their mind, while I observed their behavior.
This was an important step to evaluate and validate the design directly with users, allowing me to identify problems in the current design, uncover opportunities to improve, and later iterate my designs based on my findings.
6.3 Usability Test Feedback
- Users felt that the ‘Search’ screen was unnecessary, as the results would show hundreds of options without the proper filter of dates and amenities
- Users felt confused with the naming of the new features offered.
- Users felt frustrated for having too many overwhelming options on the very long scroll.
- Users felt happy that they could split the bill but didn’t understand how to scan the QR code if they are not next to one another.
- Users preferred corporate payment
Click here to view and interact with Mid-Fidelity Prototype
6.4 Visual Interface
After implementing the feedback points received from usability testing, it was time to make sure that the user interface of the app was intuitive, attractive, and efficient. I wanted to keep consistency in the branding as well as use common interaction patterns that users are already familiar with. I ended up putting together a UI design kit showcasing all the major visual components to be used in the design of the application.
7. Solution
The solution consist of 2 phases:
Live experience:
To provide stress-free and focus only on business travel purpose offering amenities specifically for business travelers that are focused on one of the 3 areas:
- Team meetings
- Events
- Solo Travelers — Remote
Digital experience:
- To clean up the overwhelming information through the search bar
- Add the Business Feature on the platform that includes de
- amenities filter
- split check
- business account
7.1 Prototype
Click here to view and interact with High-Fidelity Prototype
8. Outcomes & Lessons
I wish I could dedicate more time exploring the other user’s flows (the homeowner and the employer side) t better apply the functionalities in the APP.
This project was done fully remotely and with little supervision. I improved my project and time management using the Trello tool to organize myself. I was exposed to concepts of UX strategy, lean product development, prioritization, introduction to visual design, material design, screen states in UX|UI… it was a lot of learning for a 1-week project!
Getting remote feedback, testing, and progressive development, and project documentation were quite challenging! But nevertheless, I am satisfied with the version documented here! There is definitely a need for improvement if given more time.
This publication is part of my journey as a student of UX / UI Design Bootcamp at Ironhack.
Do you have any feedback? Contact me on LinkedIn.
Thanks for reading ✌
