i redesigned the airbnb wishlist feature as my application to kleiner perkins
design fellowship program this video is about what i did and how i did it
airbnb is an app where you can book places to live while you travel
and while you are browsing these places you can save the ones that you like
to a wish list after browsing long enough you can come back to your wish list compare the
options you have in book the one that you like the most you can share edit and delete a wishlist
that is the current wishlist feature and my challenge is to make it better
the due date of this challenge was in 20 days when i started this project
i made a plan that would take 10 days to complete leaving myself a gap for 10 days
just in case something happens and plus i also need to make this video
i started with understanding the users i had a list of hypotheses about why people use wishlist
and potential pain points of the current user flow i gathered five of my connections and asked them
about their last time using airbnb their last time using wishlist and let them run me through what
they would do if they are going to book a place for their new year trip to san francisco after the
interview i am super lost because although i only interviewed five participants every single one of
them have different way of using the wish list in many different concerns and suggestions so i
made an empathy map for each of the user interview and also tried my best to synthesize the findings
to move on i knew that i had to better define the problem that i'm trying to solve so i started with
building a main persona her name is alexander and alexander represents a typical user that
uses airbnb or that uses the wishlist feature so alexander is 30 years old and she wants to
plan for her next trip to new york but she hasn't booked her ticket yet because she's still waiting
for her friends to confirm the dates so alexander is a holiday lover who needs a way to save the
places she wants to stay in new york so that she can prepare early and come back to book a favorite
place when the dates are confirmed but just thinking about alexander is not enough so i added
two more personas just to capture the scope of the potential users the second persona is Niklas
Niklas is someone who uses airbnb spiritually Niklas is 25 years old and he is a frequent
traveler and he needs help to organize his diverse tribal ideas into a simple system so that he gets
to travel to places that he dreamed of with his best friends the third persona is nathan nathan
is somebody who just started to use airbnb nathan is 60 years old he is from malina philippines and
he is a lovely grandpa who needs an accessible travel app so that he can get more familiar with
traveling products and eventually don't have to depend on his children to plan for his next trip
now the personas in the problems are better defined but i also want to
define the current state of the problem which is the current wishlist feature
and the current solutions to the problems i define so i mapped out the current user flows
all the key user actions and how users try to solve these problems and my goal is to
redesign a wishlist feature so that it solves the problem better than the current solutions
here comes my favorite part ideation i started the ideation session by using a list of how might
we questions but i was stuck so i changed to another method that i invited which is using a
bubble diagram plus five random words basically i put the main problem in the middle and then i use
a random word generator to generate five random words put the five words on the page and try to
ideate from that random word to the problem in this way i can get a very diverse range of ideas
i highlight the ones that i think can solve the problems for alexander and potentially also for
Niklas and for nathan now it's time to visualize the ideas
so i started by virtualizing my ideas with some sketches and then i made a huge mistake
i thought like okay most of my ideas are just like twisting the details of the existing app how
about i just screenshot some of the pages and then design upon the screenshots then i spent hours and
hours trying to find the best match of the font and trying to adjusting the colors the sizings
the layers and all those stuff and that's why you should never skip low fidelity prototype so i
added one new page and started over again from low fidelity prototype and i made eight major changes
in the current airbnb app when you preview the wishlist you can only see a photo in the name
and sometimes the date sometimes people create two wishlists for the same trip and they are
not aware of it because there's no preview of how many places are already in the wish list
they're not sure which one is the correct one so they just started to use two wishlists for
the same trip what i changed is that i add a number of places that's already in the wish list
this really helps alexander Niklas and nathan it helps an audience to get a sense of the progress
they've already made and to distinguish between wishlists that are really similar
in the current version of the app if you just added a wish list let's name it
san francisco and if you see another listing you want to save to the same wishlist
it will always show you this page again and ask you which wishlist do you want to choose and
sometimes people make mistake so what i changed is that each time you open the app it will only
ask you once regarding which wish list you want to save in and for the future listing it will always
be saved to the wishlist that you chose last time but you can always move to a different wish list
in the current airbnb app the naming suggestion for a wish list is the city comma the state comma
the country it works but i feel like it can be a little bit better
and that's why i added a naming feature so each time you tap this little icon
the app will automatically suggest an interesting name based on the place
you want to go and the dates you are going and the number of people that you specified
the fourth thing i added is the note taking feature currently airbnb doesn't have any
note-taking feature but what i observe from the user interview is that sometimes
Niklas and alexander don't use the wishlist feature instead they copy the link and put it to
a google doc so that they can add personal notes i added this feature because of this observation
the fifth thing that i changed is added a recently saved section in the wishlist page this is because
sometimes people just want to find that one thing that they saved and by adding the section it made
a specific listing easy to find and i also added some hierarchy to the wishlist page
so that each time you revisit this page you can directly see the recent places that you saved
the sixth thing i changed is the way to delete a wishlist
in the current app you have to go into a wish list go to that three dots bar and then click
delete the wish list all of the participants that i interviewed expected a swipe to delete
feature but it was just not there that's why i added the swipe to delete feature
almost there the seventh thing that i changed is the way to share a wish list i don't know why
there are two options (in the current app*) the first one is to send a link and the second one is
to invite others for the first one people cannot edit and for the second option people can't edit
i was like if you share a link you probably also want your friends to add something right to your
wishlist so i switched the choice architecture and also adjusted the tries architecture within the
options so that the copy link is on top okay this thing didn't really work out i will explain later
and the final thing i changed is that after you share a wish list and some people join
and they can no longer remove something from your wish list so instead of people dislike it
and then remove it from your wish list they can only add another like this thing also
didn't work out i will also explain later but that's it for the prototyping session
i brought my prototype to the five people that i interviewed earlier and then i also brought them
the original design of the airbnb app i asked them to complete certain actions and see which version
works better for them here's what i learned the preview places design is pretty nice so i kept it
and polished in the high fidelity version the auto save to old wishlist design is great so i kept it
the name suggestion feature is very confusing but it's really because of the icon that i designed
okay i didn't design the icon i just used an icon and it didn't work out so i changed the
icon the feature is not that bothering nor very helpful for alexander or nathan but it is super
fun and useful for Niklas so i decided to keep it the note-taking feature is somewhat helpful to
alexander and nathan and very helpful to necklace so i decided to keep it and polish the look
the recently safe design is somewhat helpful for alexander and very helpful to Niklas and nathan
so i kept it and polished the look the delete and wishlist design is very helpful to everyone so i
kept it the sheer wishlist feature is interesting there's something wrong with the original design
people don't really know what's the difference between these two options but people often choose
the first one i thought that they meant to choose the second one but no they actually don't want
a lot of people to edit their wishlist the shared wishlist design is an absolute failure
nobody really understood what i was trying to do here because they expected consistency across the
design of one app but this really doesn't bring any consistency since this is the like icon
but it performs differently with the like icon before i just completely scratch off this design
and i replaced it with a simple notification confirmation box and here's the final showcase
now let me show you the high fidelity prototype so let's say i want to go to
san francisco during the new year i search san francisco new year and then this is the result
i look into the first place and i like it so i type the like icon and it'll ask me which wishlist
do i want to save it to i can create a new wish list when viewing this i can also see the number
of places already saved into my old wishlist so now let me create a new wishlist and the
automatic name suggestion would be the city name i can also change the name by tapping this magic
icon i like new york and san francisco better so i will save it with this name create
once saved it will give me a notification bar and i can also take note by tapping this
i will say great design close to mia's home and perfect now i continue browsing housing for my
san francisco trip and i like this place too so i will tap the like bar and it will directly save to
the wishlist that i just created but i can always move it to another wishlist but for now let's just
keep it in the new year in san francisco wishlist now let me take you to the wishlist page there's a
recently saved bar so you can always check what i just saved to my wish list let's see our new year
in san francisco list if i want to share this list with somebody i can click the share icon and then
i can send a link or invite others by inviting other people i give them the right to edit or add
something to my wishlist so let's do invite others and for this page i put the copy link to the first
choice and the second group will be sharing this via a messaging app so for now let's copy the link
because this one is invite others so when people join in you can actually see the profile picture
here and if you want to remove something from the shared wishlist i designed a little pop-up
notification bar asking you are you sure you want to remove it from everyone's wishlist
and for now let's just cancel it let's go back to our wish list in order to delete a wishlist
we can simply just swipe left and here we go we can delete it for now we can cancel
because i like new york (I'm not sure about this statement) that's it that's it thank you
thank you for staying with me until this point i just want to say that if this entire challenge
is not a take-home design challenge but rather an actual design challenge in an actual company
like airbnb then there's something i would do differently well first of all
the design edition won't just be dependent on five participants answered there's probably a ux
research team that will do the ux research and data analysts that provide real data to backup
design decisions and plus usually any design with the least effort that leads to the largest
impact will be implemented first so anything is always a collaboration among the engineers the
pm designer or other stakeholders sometimes the designers think this is just a small design change
but for the engineers it's really a huge change because it might mean a change to the database
or thousands of unit tests we never really know what is you know more implementable
without asking for other stakeholders even though there's so many difficulties
i still think trying to make the most understandable and accessible product
for everyone is super important and i sincerely wish for a future where tech products are
very considerate and inclusive thank you very much my name is Aliena and i'm professionally
known as Elena if you haven't subscribed to my channel please do so that will help me a lot and
if you like my video please give it a like it will help a lot with my application to this program and
please leave a comment down below thank you very much see you next time bye and happy new year!