Add a Feature to Add Value
- AirBnB
Problem Statement
Travellers waste time searching for the most affordable accommodations meeting their needs, as the search results, although within the price range specified, are not sorted by price
Solution
Add a sorting feature enabling users to sort accommodations by price, either from low to high or vice versa
Before
No sort function
After
Sort function added
Add A Feature - Process
My role
UX Designer
Duration
1month
Skills
UX Research
User interviews
Wireframing
Prototyping
Usability Testing
Before
Too much whitespace in sort button
Confusing sort icon
The enhanced Airbnb experience
Imagine finding most affordable accommodations that meet all your needs in a fuss-free manner. That’s the primary goal of the optimized Airbnb platform.
Learning from Airbnb’s competitor’s
I studied some of the Airbnb’s direct, leading competitors. Comparisons are as follows:
Airbnb has all the above features, except “sort by price”.
Talking to Airbnb users and gathering insights
During the interview of Airbnb users, I gathered insights on various aspects from their use of Airbnb:
What are the existing feature you like:
I love how user friendly Airbnb is
I love the whole concept of renting someone’s apartment or house and not spending a ton on a hotel
I like the pricing and ratings
I like the reviews, pricing and location
What feature do you wish Airbnb to have:
Sort by pricing and ratings
Sort reveiws and filter through them by capturing important phrases and displaying at the top of comments
Based on my user interviews with Airbnb users,the main insight is as follows:
What is the main problem?
From the user interviews and analysis, the main problem is clear :
Travellers waste time searching for accommodations within their desired price range
User Persona
From the insights gathered from the interview as well as that of the process of the formulation of the problem statement, I created the persona Sally, so that I could stay focused on designing for this specific group of people.
A new feature to tackle this problem is therefore proposed:
User Flow - envisioned user navigation within the app
Low Fidelity Wireframes
High Fidelity Wireframes
Prototype
Usability Testing Results
The results are as follows:
100%
of the participants were able to find affordable accomodations efficiently
40%
of the participants suggested removing the whitespace from the sort button
20%
of the participants were confused with the sort button
Revised Screens
What have I learnt?
I learnt the importance of creating more rapport building questions
I learnt the best practice of having only 1 UX action per screen so as not to overwhelm users
I learnt that frames within a group cannot be linked in prototype mode in Figma
What’s next?
Conducting more in depth research to find out more about how people book accommodations on airbnb’s competitor sites
Looking into other needs in booking accommodations
I hope to incoporate all these needs into the design of future website serving this purpose, to create excellent user experience
After
Reduced whitespace
Updated sorting icon to make it more intuitive
60%
of the users chose price as one of thier top consideration for accommodation