Mobile App: Airbnb Au Pair
A travel app concept intended to help parents access childcare services through their booking with Airbnb.
TIMELINE:
2 weeks (Summer 2018)
ROLE:
Solo project. Conducted user research and created a mid-fidelity mobile app solution.
DELIVERABLES:
User interviews, personas, competitor analysis, decision flow diagram, storyboard, journey map, sketches/wireframes, low-mid fidelity prototypes
TOOLS:
Adobe XD, InVision
PROCESS:
0. Preface
1. User Research
2. Competitor Analysis
3. Ideation
4. Key Insights
5. UX Scenario
6. Prototyping & User Testing
PROBLEM STATEMENT
Airbnb does not currently offer parent-oriented services and amenities for vacationing families. Therefore, it can be difficult for parents to fully relax and spend quality time together when the children are young and require supervision.
DESIGN QUESTION
How might we make Airbnb more parent-friendly for families traveling for leisure with their young children so that we may increase bookings by this demographic?
0. Preface: What problem is this project trying to solve?
Going into this project, the problem and the user persona were both undefined. As a result, I leaned on my proto-persona to guide my research. User interviews with 2 individuals helped identify user habits and pain points, while the competitor analysis highlighted trends and market opportunities.
PROTO-PERSONA
My focus was on married men in their 40s. The proto-persona was created with many details allowing room to discover potential pain points during user interviews.
Proto-Persona: The user is a married man in his 40's. The user and his wife need a relaxing vacation.
1. User Research: What are their pain points & motivations?
USER INTERVIEWS
User interviews were conducted with 2 male individuals who matched the approximate age and marital status of the proto-persona. Both men were career-oriented and married to women who worked full-time.
While I was looking for overlapping pain points in individuals with and without children, it became clear during user interviews that having children contributed to another set of challenges. For both users, it was hard enough to make time to take a vacation, but for parents, taking care of the kids was a job in itself.
USER RESEARCH FINDINGS
• The user wanted for both him and his wife to have a restful vacation.
• Vacation was less restful when there were children to take care of.
• One user was loyal to the Disney Cruise Line for its parent-centered amenities.
I decided to focus on the user with children and explore how Airbnb could help him plan and book a more relaxing vacation with his wife and two kids.
USER PERSONA
Responses collected from user interviews helped determine characteristics and behaviors outlined in the user persona.
User Persona: "The lifting of the weight of trying to manage a family was a huge thing for us."
2. Competitor Analysis: Where is the market opportunity?
A competitor analysis was conducted to get a better sense of the parent-centered amenities being offered by other businesses in the hospitality industry. How were they appealing to parents traveling with young children? How did they help with family management? A closer look at Airbnb’s competitors revealed a spectrum of parent-centered experiences that Airbnb was missing out on.
Competitor Analysis: Airbnb could offer more family-centered services to help parents with kids.
COMPETITOR ANALYSIS FINDINGS
Expedia and TripAdvisor are the strongest DIRECT competitors. By offering a one-stop-shop for hotels, flights, and vacation rentals, Expedia and TripAdvisor simplify the booking experience for families traveling with children.
Disney Cruise Line and Princess Cruises are the strongest INDIRECT competitors and have the greatest competitive edge. By offering activities, entertainment, designated spaces, and childcare services, the cruise lines offer parents the option to spend time together as a family and/or achieve one-on-one time without the kids.
Throughout the booking experience, there is room for Airbnb to appeal more to families traveling with children. Access to additional search criteria and parent-centered amenities would help make Airbnb stay competitive against Expedia, TripAdvisor, Disney Cruise Line, and Princess Cruises.
Disney Cruise Line and Princess Cruises are the strongest INDIRECT competitors and have the greatest competitive edge. By offering activities, entertainment, designated spaces, and childcare services, the cruise lines offer parents the option to spend time together as a family and/or achieve one-on-one time without the kids.
Throughout the booking experience, there is room for Airbnb to appeal more to families traveling with children. Access to additional search criteria and parent-centered amenities would help make Airbnb stay competitive against Expedia, TripAdvisor, Disney Cruise Line, and Princess Cruises.
3. Ideation: What are some possible solutions?
BRAINSTORMING / AFFINITY DIAGRAM
Once all of the user interview data was collected, the information was organized into an affinity diagram to aggregate user responses and identify themes. Key words and phrases from the transcripts were sorted into 7 categories based on recurring conversation topics. This process was helpful in formulating user insights and potential opportunities for improvement.
Affinity Diagram: Conversation topics were organized into recurring themes.
I LIKE... I WISH... WHAT IF...
A "I Like...I Wish...What If..." activity was also conducted to come up with broad range of possible solutions that would resonate with the user based on his pain points, needs, and goals. This exercise was instrumental in translating data and empathy into an innovative, user-centered design.
4. Key Insights: Which solution will I prototype?
The ideas were narrowed down to a three possible solutions which included childcare services, more testimonials by parents, and more kid-friendly features. I chose to prototype the solution with childcare services for two reasons:
1. If implemented, it would be easier and more cost-effective to test a bold idea early in the product’s lifecycle. Iterative design allows us to create and test ideas quickly putting the user experience at the heart of the design process.
2. Having access to childcare services would create the most direct opportunity for the user and his wife to relax.
Key Insights: Childcare services would create the most direct opportunity for the user and his wife to relax.
CONCEPT
The user may benefit from receiving parent-centered services and amenities with his booking and being able to choose between opportunities in his search results.
EXECUTION
The product would be Airbnb Au Pair, a service that offers accommodations that come with a qualified au pair who is highly reviewed and can be trusted to provide on-site childcare support.
BENEFIT
Doing this will allow Airbnb to incentivize more families with young children to plan their trips with Airbnb knowing that their kids will be safe, supervised and entertained. Meanwhile, parents will be able to take a break from both work and parenting and also spend quality time with the whole family.
ADDITIONAL RESEARCH: AU PAIRS
Au pair programs offers qualified individuals the opportunity to live and study in the U.S. for one or two years in exchange for providing up to 45 hours of childcare per week. They are integrated into a host family and demonstrate a genuine interest in caring for children and expanding their cultural awareness.
Project Scope: The project considers the user's experience with planning, consideration, and booking.
5. UX Scenario: How might the user interact with Airbnb Au Pair?
STORYBOARDING
The user's experience with Airbnb Au Pair was visualized with a storyboard to show real world context. In this scenario, I assumed that the user had already used Airbnb before and trusted the brand to deliver a quality service. Since au pairs may be a new concept to some families, the availability of customer reviews would help users learn about others’ experiences and also be consistent with how Airbnb currently offers customer reviews.
Storyboard: The user discovers Airbnb Au Pair and recognizes a solution to his problem.
USER JOURNEY MAP
The user journey map was created to outline the user's actions, thought process, and areas of opportunity. The most time is spent in the Consideration phase as the user questions whether his children will be safe and if his wife will be open to the idea. For the purposes of the prototype, it is assumed that for now, the user makes it past this phase.
User Journey Map: The user is motivated to minimize the duties of parenting and maximize restfulness.
6. Prototyping: How will the product look?
Since the experience is on a mobile device, the purpose of the decision flow diagram was to build the user flow with a minimal number of screens, while still allowing the user the freedom to filter his search criteria.
Decision Flow Diagram: Planning the user's flow with a minimal number of steps/screens.
SKETCHES
Multiple low-fidelity paper wireframes were sketched and then user tested in InVision. The goal was to quickly validate the solution concept, clarity of components, and ease of use.
USER TESTING: LOW-FIDELITY PAPER PROTOTYPE
Focus on clarity and functionality. Much attention was paid to how the user would experience each screen leading up to the Listing. Was the information communicated clearly? Was there too much or too little information? Did each touch point do what the user expected? User testing revealed the need for a stronger hierarchy of information, especially on a smaller screen.
Revised to remove guest filters. Some users were confused by the filters at the top, which became a distraction from the Au Pair feature and was removed from subsequent versions. Focusing on hierarchy, I brought more focus to the selection of Au Pairs and also made the buttons and selections more pronounced.
USER TESTING: MID-FIDELITY PROTOTYPE
After user testing the paper prototype, a mid-fidelity prototype was digitized with changes gathered from user feedback.
Revised to list the Au Pair instead of the Home. Another round of user testing revealed that the au pair and the home were competing for the user's attention on the Listing screen. In order for the service to be more parent-centered, it was important for the user to learn about the au pair first and the home second.
User Testing: In order for the service to be more parent-centered, the user must learn about the au pair first.
Task: Use Airbnb Au Pair to make a reservation in San Diego, CA from September 18-22.
Conclusion
Rather than starting with a problem to guide my user interviews, I relied on my user interviews to guide me to the problem. I was able to identify a problem by carefully listening to users and keeping their pain points and motivations at the center of the process. By carrying out this research, I learned the value of asking the right questions and that there’s more than one way to ask “why?”
Ideation and rapid prototyping led to Airbnb Au Pair, a solution with the potential to achieve the following:
1. Help the user enjoy a more relaxing vacation through on-site childcare support
2. Help families and au pairs expand their cultural awareness
3. Increase bookings by families traveling with young children
This case study expanded my interest in conducting user research and discovering the information that is so valuable in the design thinking process.
Future Opportunities: There's more room iterate through user research and testing.
Future Opportunities
Talk to more users. While speaking with both users was helpful and informative, only one had young children. If given more time, I would interview 4-5 more users with young children to better identify common pain points within their travel experiences.
More user testing. The user testing I conducted was more to learn about functionality. The prototype would need to be tested with more target users to determine if the feature proves useful and desirable to that demographic.
Add another user persona: Married, career-oriented women in their 40's with young children. Although the persona is a married man in his 40's, this project quickly turned into a service for families. I would be interested in doing more user research on working women to determine if their family vacation goals and pain points align with those of their husbands.
