Young adults often struggle to form new connections due to issues with trust, finding peers with shared interests, and the desire for genuine real-life experiences. In today's digital age, building trust in new connections can be challenging, and transitioning from digital connections to real-world relationships can be a daunting task.
Airbnb Connections creates a network that you can trust, built through your closest friends, and automatically generates and recommends groups within your circle based on shared interests. Through Airbnb Experiences and Stays, it prompts shared experiences that align with group interests and discussions, creating real-life connections.
How can you use the power of Airbnb’s greatest assets (digital tools that bring together human connection) to uplift and connect a digitally hyper-connected generation in need of social connection?
Create a digital tool or experience that capitalises on Gen Z’s online connectivity to deliver meaningful IRL experiences through Airbnb.
My Role
This project was a collaboration between myself and another UX student. From the beginning we established each of our strengths and used this to assign roles throughout. I took on the majority of the work at the beginning of the project, idea generating, researching, and interpreting these insights, whereas my teammate focused more on the refinement of these ideas and the final stages of the project such as the UI design and video production.
Target Audience & Airbnb Research
We began our research by exploring our target audience and also Airbnb and their ethos and products. We wanted to ensure our solution was in-keeping with Airbnb as a company and what they stand for, while also speaking to the audience we were designing for.
Some key takeaways from this stage in our research were:
Airbnbs core values emphasise community, safety, trust, innovation, respect and inclusivity
Gen Z prefer communicating through messaging
Digital interactions have failed to replace the need to connect, digital communities that foster offline connection lead to deeper connections and decreased feelings of loneliness and isolation
Section of research into Airbnb
Competitor Research
We completed extensive competitor research into apps focused on making connection, such as Bumble Friends, Meetup and Backpackr. We focused on researching their key features and reviews, noting the areas where they are successful and the areas where users are dissatisfied and why.
Research into bumble for friends: sign-up flow, travel mode, creating plans
Meetup app store review analysis
Interviews & Mapping Insights
We conducted interviews with a broad range of individuals fitting into our target audience to identify pain points that we could solve with our product. I mapped the insights gained from these and my forum research into different problem spaces, such as issues with meeting new people, making connections and documenting travels.
Mapping interview insights
Opportunity-Solution Tree
At this point in the project we had gathered interesting insights but hadn't yet decided on the direction of our solution, so I took the insights from my mapping and created an opportunity-solution tree to formulate different ideas and potential solutions to each of the identified issues. This was a way to broaden our thoughts before condensing our idea.
Opportunity-Solution Tree
Organising Key Opportunities & Solutions
Using the opportunity-solution tree we then went through each opportunity and solution and pulled the ones we felt could come together into one cohesive solution.
Through our research we had discovered that there were three main strands to creating a new connection: Connecting, Sharing Interests and Sharing Experiences. So we split our opportunities and solutions into each of these categories to create a 'digital hostel experience' focused on making connections.
Opportunities and solutions organised into three main sections
Considering Features
I then took these opportunities and solutions and translated them into potential app features that would facilitate creating connections
Potential app features
Idea Development
We continued to develop the idea for our digital hostel experience, defining features and sketching wireframes
User Story Map
Sketching wireframes
D&AD is all about new ideas, and at this point we started to feel like we had gotten too bogged down in the technical details of our app. We also worried we weren't achieving what we set out to do : create new connections. So I went back to the drawing board, taking what we had learned in our research and interpreting them in new ways to form interesting ideas and directions we could take this project.
Ideas boards, thinking outside the box
Suggested Groups: Development
I sketched and created simple wireframes for an idea rooted in group suggestions, where you select your interests and are randomly placed in groups with people with common interests. Ultimately what was missing from this idea was trust, so I started to review our user interviews and insights to see what instilled trust when making new connections for users.
An interesting idea formed from these explorations, the idea of being able to preview the demographics of a group before joining - a feature that would solve the issue that we found some users were having with Airbnb Experience: not knowing if there would be similar aged people with common interests attending when you are signing up for an experience.
Sketches & Low-Fidelity Wireframes
Considering Networks
In my explorations I started to consider the idea of networks and how we are all connected through a certain number of connections, and that many of the people we interviewed said they mostly make friends through other friends. Also making friends this may instills a level of trust in having a mutual connection, which eliminates the issues we had been considering around safety. So I began thinking of ways we could utilise the concept of networks and mutual connection in an app to facilitate the making of new connections.
Networks and connections idea generation
Features & Site Map
Using the idea of networks and connections, and integrating the app work we had done previously, I began generating ideas for features for a new application based on formulating new connections through existing ones. Some of the main features being the different tiers of connection, and group suggestions within your network, then considering ways to convert these online groups of shared interests to real experiences.
Creating a site map and deciding on some of the key features helped me to articulate this idea to my teammate so we could begin carrying it forward together.
Feature ideas and site map
Sign-Up Flow
While sketching and creating low-fidelity wireframes for this idea, I started to consider how a user would sign-up to the app and input their interests when there are so many niche interests that a user could have. Continuing with the visuals of a network I came up with an idea for interest selection that involves selecting a broader category to open up a 'spider menu ' with more niche interests within that.
'Spider' selection screen idea
Proposed Wireframes
Both my teammate and I worked separately to develop intitial wireframes for the final application, and then came together to join our proposed ideas and use this as the basis for the final design.
My initial wireframe designs
Video: Storyboarding
As I had a lot of ideas for the video, I decided to take on the role of creating the storyboards, considering visuals, narrative and text. I began by sketching my video ideas on paper and then moved to Miro to add the wording and animations for each scene, this then was translated into a digital storyboard on Figma.
Storyboarding: sketches, animation and text plan
Section of Figma storyboards
Young adults often struggle to form new connections due to issues with trust, finding peers with shared interests, and the desire for genuine real-life experiences. In today's digital age, building trust in new connections can be challenging, and transitioning from digital connections to real-world relationships can be a daunting task.
Airbnb Connections creates a network that you can trust, built through your closest friends, and automatically generates and recommends groups within your circle based on shared interests. Through Airbnb Experiences and Stays, it prompts shared experiences that align with group interests and discussions, creating real-life connections.
Sofia Durnford
Portfolio