UI Challenge: Booking a Mutual Vacation with Friends through AirBnB
Weekly Product Design
The Challenge
Design a feature for Airbnb, allowing a group of friends to plan and book their mutual vacation.
Introduction
I approached this design challenge using the heuristic approach. Heuristic evaluation involves having a small set of assessments that examine the interface while judging its compliance with recognized usability principles.
The time duration for this design challenge was only one week. I felt the best way to tackle this was to see what Airbnb already has to offer and how I can add on to its features. Below, you'll find examples of the main screens that are similar to the design challenge concept.
Let’s take a look at what Airbnb already has for group vacations. For example, let’s use a trip used in the past that my sister Jennifer created. She booked a house for her bridesmaids for Airbnb accommodation. Let’s evaluate these screens.
During the assessment, I found that the Add the place button on screen 1.0 was an excellent feature to build on.
The settings icon also allows the user to navigate to screen 1.1, where the group's admin can manage who is part of the group. By playing around with it, I can conclude that I can share and invite other friends, but the only person who can book is the user, Jennifer, who is only allowed to book the trips.
I concluded that the application's trip section is where I would build out how the group of friends can plan and manage their trip.
New Feature(s)
I created a new scenario where Jennifer is planning a vacation to Turkey with a group of friends.
I wanted to add to Airbnb's features by a suggestion column, a disagree or agree on call to action button (yes or no) so that the group can decide what would be the most favorite activities to do together.
A commentary icon displays any ongoing comments about the trip, which I find very useful for this scenario.
Solution
Suggestion Column- This screen is the solution to planning a mutual vacation.
Group Itinerary Section
The Challenge
A challenge I find myself coming across is designing without feedback from teammates or other users. While sharing my UI Visuals on LinkedIn, I received some quality feedback that helped me to make further iterations.
Reiterations based on feedback
• The pill form for notes was a questionable design in which I assumed that it would be read as tags, but a user mentioned that it would be hard to really fit in all the information into a pill or button. Being able to see the notes in one place be more useful.
• A potential user felt that they would need more information to decide on a trip. User habit is that they usually form pros and cons before deciding.
• Setting criteria such as (budget, time, ambiance, crowds) was a suggestion to add. Noting that this information would be an excellent place to have under the notes section.
Not quite there yet…
I felt that there was still something missing. I created two “call to action” buttons.
•Add to Itinerary
•Add to Suggestion
I wanted to show what both views would look like when the settings are changed. I made further reiterations for these screens. These buttons would improve the flow of the user when adding and suggesting trips.
Next Steps
• I would design a screen that shows how the traveler could add another friend to be an administrator. I had in mind how the group of friends plan the time and date for the confirmed trips.
• I would focus on designing the collaboration process for the travelers in greater detail
• Creating a hi-fidelity prototype where actual user testing can be done on the prototype. I want to test the prototype to analyze how users interact with the reiterated design. Feedback from users would be essential to see if the placements of buttons are easily viewed and if they disagree and agree button is a simple process to plan a mutual vacation.
Thank you for taking the time to read my design process on this design challenge. Do share your thoughts!