Airbnb
Turning variability into confidence
Role
Product Designer
Duration
6 Weeks
Team
Engy K., Jerry S.
PROBLEM
Variability across stays
Unlike traditional stays (hotels), Airbnb's have high variability between hosts. As a result, users must figure out the logistics of the stay location and how it works.
Uncertainty With Each Stay
Guests face uncertainty each time they book, needing to relearn how the stay works before and during their trip.
Vague Location Information
Because Airbnb hides the exact address until after booking, users must infer proximity.
Fragmented Stay Details
Requires users to remember or search for information at the moments they need it the most.
RESEARCH AND DISCOVERY
How do users navigate the variability?
We conducted six usability test evaluating the end-to-end experience from search to end of the trip, which led to the following key insights:
Process:
*Image was blurred to protect participant confidentiality
Analysis of testing data
Team's analysis from findings of testing
Summary of Key Insights Found:
Search by trip intent, not listings
Participants anchored their search around a specific destination (e.g event venue), to evaluate stays on proximity.
Arrival is a high-stress moment
Users repeatedly searched across messages and trip pages to locate essential information, often relying on memory to recall where details were stored.
How might we help users find stays based on what they're traveling for, not just where they're going?
SOLUTION: RADIUS-BASED SEARCH
We introduced a radius-based search that lets users refine stays by proximity to a meaningful location tied to their trip intent. Because Airbnb withholds exact addresses prior to booking for safety reasons, this approach enables users to evaluate location suitability without compromising host privacy.
Entry point and discoverability
A challenge when introducing a new feature is placing them where users are likely to find them, without compromising existing patterns.
For the radius-based search, we placed the entry point within the map view, where it naturally aligns with users' expectations and mental model around location exploration.
Map View:
Radius entry point
Default
List View
Flexibility in search refinement
When designing the radial search, we focused on giving users flexible control to refine the radius parameters around their pinned location.
It was critical to give users the confidence that the stay location works logistically first, then they can decide on other factors when picking their stay.
How it works:
Slider control to adjust radius
Stay Comparison
We retained Airbnb’s map patterns and introduced distance of stay, enabling confident stay selection once the location was validated.
How might we centralize stay details to reduce searching and switching between pages?
SOLUTION: CENTRALIZING STAY DETAILS
We organized the Trip Details page into tabs that group essential stay information in one place, making it easy for guests to find and remember where key details live. This shifts messages away from logistics and toward host service and communication.
Trip details hold the source of truth; Messages support conversation
Before designing, we took a step back to organized what information should be placed in trip details and messages..
We placed repeatable, high-importance details in the trip details page and reserved messages for contextual communication.
This organization reduces cognitive load and creates a predictable mental model for where information lives
Reduce scroll effort with tab navigation
Information was hidden within long scrolls, which increased visual scanning and cognitive effort, particularly when users were time-pressured.
We designed a page where users can have easy access to repeatable information and used tabs to reduce this load by chunking information into predictable sections that are faster to navigate.
Easy access to trip details
OUTCOME
Searching For Stay:
36%
Decrease in Time on Task
Reduced the location guesswork and decision friction.
76%
Increase in Confidence Rating
Explicit distance feedback eliminated the need for mental estimation.
7-Point Likert Scale
Locating Information:
50%
Decrease in Time to Locate Information
Reduced page swapping and scrolling
To evaluate our designs, we conducted six usability tests comparing them against findings from earlier tests with the original design. We identified the following improvements: