iOS - Venue Feature
Project Overview
My Involvement: Mind Map, Ideation, Interviews, User Journey, Design Studio, Feature Prioritization, Usability testing and participated in all other aspects with team members.
Design Tools: Sketch, InVision
Time: 2 weeks
Background
“Airbnb is a trusted community marketplace for people to list, discover, and book unique accommodations around the world — online or from a mobile phone or tablet.”
Airbnb guests are short-term renters, and hosts are property owners/managers. Guests can easily find short-term rentals and reach out to their point of contact and hosts can post their spaces to rent to potential guests.
Problem
The UX team decided to research and prototype a useful solution for event Venue Hosts’ and Guests’ interaction through Airbnb's mobile application. Airbnb Venue Guests are event space bookers, and Venue Hosts are event space owners/managers.
Business Goals:
- Guests should be able to find prospective event spaces and reach out to their point of contact
- Hosts should be able to promote their event space to guests
- Guests and hosts may be able to identify one another based on shared interests
Solution
Platform: iOS per design constraint
Features: To create a venue feature on the existing Airbnb mobile application with features for finding proposed event spaces, including: Business Goals: Stories, Robust Filtering, Venue Promotion, and User Goals: Detailed Media section, Bookmarking, Venue Details, and Map.
Research
The first phase of research which consisted of the following methods:
Mind Mapping, Screener Survey and extensive Interviews.
Research Synthesis
The second phase was to synthesize the research which consisted of the following methods:
Affinity Mapping, Persona Generation and User Journey.
Affinity Mapping
We performed Affinity Mapping to identify patterns and themes across out user’s demographics, habits, behaviors, and thoughts. Some key insights we obtained were:
- Users wanted ability to visualize venues
- Users wanted to track venues they like
- Users wanted ability to efficiently search and find suitable venues
- Users care about where the venue is located and how it is laid out
- Users need to know what the venue will provide vs. what they may need to bring
- Users wanted to track venues they like
- Users wanted ability to efficiently search and find suitable venues
- Users care about where the venue is located and how it is laid out
- Users need to know what the venue will provide vs. what they may need to bring
Persona Generation
We created 2 personas based on all of our research as a tool to holistically look at the user base in one quick and easy way. We created the primary persona, Rachel Black to keep as the user we were solving for, but kept the secondary persona, Nancy Barbs in mind when we were ideating and designing.
User Journey
We created rough sketches of User Journeys to keep the users' interactions and journey of the proposed features through out the rest of the project.
Design
The Design process included:
Design Studio, Feature Prioritization (MoSCoW), Low/Mid/High Fidelity Wireframing, and Prototype Testing and Iterations.
Design Studio
The Design Studio is a method for the team to rapidly generate design ideas around the problem we identified after synthesizing our research.
Feature Prioritization
The team then performed a feature prioritization exercise to narrow down the list of features generated from the Design Studio, using the MoSCoW.
We ended up with the following list which included business goals since we needed to keep those to test with users:
Must Haves:
Events on Homepage (BG)
Media
Venue Promotion (BG)
Media
Venue Promotion (BG)
Should Haves:
Maps
Robust Filtering (BG)
Robust Filtering (BG)
Lo/Mid/Hi Fidelity Wireframing, and Prototype Testing and Iterations
The final step in Design was to create and test each level of fidelity and iterate along the way.
Lo-Fidelity Prototype & Testing
We performed 2 usability tests and found these key takeaways:
- Couldn’t differentiate between featured venues and user-filtered results
- Confused by filters and graphs
- Couldn’t find pathway to contact host
- Confused by filters and graphs
- Couldn’t find pathway to contact host
Mid-Fidelity Prototype & Testing
We then created mid-fidelity wireframes and tested them with 11 users in 2 rounds of testing.
We iterated the following:
We broke up first task into 2
We got rid of book now button
We included real number on the price filtering page and number of venues
We darkened and included less results number on the filter results button
We created featured stores since users mistrusted sponsored venues and did not click
We included a checkbox for hosts to temporarily find users based on search results
Hi-Fidelity Screens
(1) - Created Venue Feature Icon on main page
(2) - Created Venue Featured Stories
(3) - Included Themes & Attributes options
(4) - Option to allow hosts to contact based on users' search criteria
(5) - Allows users to see Themes and Attributes picked
(6) - Featured Stories is still shown on results page
Hi-Fidelity Screens
(7) - Allow user to Contact host through name and photo on Venue page
(8) - Included short Contact bio on messaging page
(9) - Included a Contact Host option written out
FINAL PROTOTYPE
Clickable on this page
Next Steps
Agree upon KPIs with stakeholders
Run more usability tests on High Fidelity Prototype
Synthesize and Iterate
Improve Venue promotions
Improve messaging between hosts and guests