Design Thinking with AirBnb

Design Thinking?

Design-specific cognitive activities that designers apply during the process of designing 

— Wikipedia

WTF?

Design Thinking?

Design is simply crafting the optimal logic

to solve a problem

Airbnb is like crowdsourced hotels

Let's focus on how they enriched the experience of travelling

How did they start?

Industrial Design Conference - SF

All the hotel rooms were booked.

How did they start?

Industrial Design Conference - SF

Why don't we rent out our apartment?

How did they start?

Industrial Design Conference - SF

They placed 3 airbeds on the floor

How did they start?

Industrial Design Conference - SF

This isn't very exiting...

Being designers, they then thought about their guests — they became the ‘patient’.

How did they start?

Industrial Design Conference - SF

They provided city maps and t-shirts for their guests

They even gave coins to their guests to give to the homeless on the streets outside their apartment

WTF?

That's genius

Where exactly is

“Outside the box”?

Look at the overall problem statement and find out answers.

Take the most blatant answer and eliminate it. Now, tackle the problem.

Suppose you wanna start an amazingly popular restaurant. What’s most important for a restaurant to do?

Serve food. Duh..

Okay. Then don't serve food!

Again, WTF?

You now look at things like ambiance, seating, positioning of tables, customer service, decoration/themes…

Well, you get the point, right?

Oh, and don't forget to serve food as well...

AirBnb

Have beds and provide breakfast?

Nah. Too mainstream.

How about give them city guides,

some funny t-shirts and make sure they aren’t stalled by the homeless outside

in the neighborhood?

Done!

Now, let's get the beds

Now, think about what Airbnb can do for guests who just finished an amazing vacation...

Maybe a blog to share their experiences?

The possibilities are endless...

Don’t worry about scale or data!

"Don’t worry about scalability,  especially when it comes to designing for human beings."

- Paul Graham - YCombinator

No comprendo? Well, another great outcome of Airbnb’s design process shall explain thusly.

The founders realized that one of the problems that discouraged people from using the service was the poor quality of photos uploaded by the hosts

What can they do?

Go to every host’s place and take quality pics for them? And maybe stay over there and talk to them and get valuable personal feedback.

Hell no, that's impossible

Uhm, yes. They did.

Guess what, they doubled their profit within a week!

Paying attention to small things like these can make a huge difference at the end.

And you can’t be a slave to scalability when it comes to design

Btw, You still can book a professional photographer and the site will send you one for free.

Be a pirate!

Stars vs Hearts.

Airbnb once hired a designer and asked him to experiment around with the “star” option

The designer immediately came and suggested something else,  he wanted to change the star to a heart!

There was a 30% increase in clicks on those icons within 24 hours.

“If you find something glimmering, throw a dynamite on it and blow it out of proportions.”

- Joe Gebbia - Chief Product Officer @ AirBnb

Even a small, near trivial change, like the star-to-heart thing, could make a big difference at the end and add more meaning than you can imagine.

When starting out anything, imagine it to the full scale — that vision alone can guide you on and on.

DESIGN THINKING

The essential ability to combine empathy, creativity and rationality to meet user needs and drive business success!

Must read

http://www.cio.com/article/3053937/business-analytics/why-design-thinking-is-becoming-a-game-changer-for-many-enterprises.html

https://medium.com/@arasuarun/how-i-learnt-design-thinking-the-right-way-the-story-of-airbnb-119945932a0