What I learned from my first case study
Airbnb Case Study: Guests with last-minute cancellations
Products Buds Fellowship 2020
Case Study Overview: The case study focuses on providing guests suffering from last-minute cancellations with community-based and quick solutions.
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Duration: 7 weeks
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Team members: Linh Tran, Garima Vaidya
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Biggest achievement: Lessons I learned, which will be detailed below
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Overview
Problem
20.5% of complaints from Airbnb guests is hosts giving last-minute cancellations, resulting in disrupted travel plans and increased price.
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Furthermore, Airbnb's way of dealing with this situation is not effective (give full refunds or transfer the money to a different accommodation), pushing guests to find accommodations on their own.
Why is this problem important?
Guests lose trust in Airbnb. For the marketplace operating on both the hosts and the guests, relationship with guests is of utmost importance.
Solution
We developed a feature helping guests connect with other hosts quickly and efficiently, while prioritizing available accommodations based on guests' needs from the last booking. This feature create immediate and community-based support.
My contribution
Firstly, I brainstormed and designed survey questions, conducted interview with 4 people, then synthesized insights
I took a stab to create the hi-fi prototype using Figma
Finally, I prepared the presentation and presented to the judges of Product Buds
Our approach
1. RESEARCH
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Survey
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Interviews and affinity map
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Redefining our problems
2. DESIGN
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Brainstorming
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Wireframes
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Interactive Prototype
3. EVALUATE
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Present
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Lessons learned
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If I had more time/Next steps
Research
We actually did not start out with the idea of supporting guests with last-minute cancellations. Since we conducted this project in February 2021, when vaccinations for Covid-19 became more widespread, we first focused on how to make the experiences of returning to Airbnb smooth and safe for guests.
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Survey
We sent out a survey to 1) understand people's reasons to stay in Airbnb during the pandemic and 2) their possible concerns. Our target audience were guests who stayed at Airbnb during the pandemic (March 2020 - February 2021) and we received 41 responses.
The responses were very mixed, yet leaning towards a positive staying experience with Airbnb, with 50% of respondents answering “None” when it comes to concerns they have, and 90% of respondents saying that they will come back to Airbnb post-pandemic. We realized that what we thought as the problem, actually did not exist!
Therefore, we decided to go ahead with interviews to understand the guests' thoughts.
Lesson #1: Always validate your ideas before getting down to work
2. Interviews & research
I conducted interviews with 4 people with different backgrounds and age ranges, and put notes in an affinity map. I noticed the one concern that kept appearing for the question “Do you have any unpleasant experience with Airbnb hosts?”:
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"The most unpleasant experience I have ever had was in New York, when the host canceled my Airbnb because there was a power cut."
"Hosts can deny your stay at any time. They can simply say “Oh we don’t want guests at this time.”
"I don’t book Airbnb for the first night for the possibility of being canceled."
I went ahead and looked into Airbnb's cancellation policy. Hosts would get penalties, and guests would get full refund. However, guests usually felt dissatisfied with the rush of finding new accomodations.
3. Redefining our problem
After the interview, we looked at more channels for guests' feedback, such as Airbnb community platform and the app review section on AppStore. We also researched that 20.5% of the complaints were on last-minute cancellations, and guests were not happy about the way Airbnb dealt with the problem.
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Therefore, we eventually focused on solving last-minute cancellations. We theorized that besides building a strong relationship with guests, this solution would keep the revenue and guests retention within Airbnb, and not to other places like hotels or VRBO.
English 2 Specialization class (2% acceptance rate)
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Started my journey of community engagement.
English 2 Specialization class (2% acceptance rate)
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Started my journey of community engagement.
Design
1. Brainstorming
We brainstormed solutions to 2 problems of finding new accommodations and providing adequate support from Airbnb. During these times, both of us were busy with school works, so we went ahead and chose the feature of connecting guests with potential hosts in the same area, which was one of the earliest thoughts. Looking back, I wished we had let our minds wander a bit more. We never knew what other ideas we would have come up.
Lesson #2: Take the time to explore different ideas, even the crazy ones
2. Wireframe
Then we got together and discussed each page and what actions/ideas we wanted to carried out. After grouping ideas together, we sized down from 4 pages to 2 pages.
One thing I wished we had done was presenting the wireframe to users, to understand their needs. We would have a better alignment on conceptualizing our ideas with users' problems. Later on, I knew of the Agile Methodology, in which the team opted for iterative and incremental development, and will make sure to apply this method to my upcoming case studies.
I first made a quick sketch on paper for the core features and functionalities that I wanted to implement.
Lesson #3: Seek users' feedback at every stage, then produce quick iteration
3. User Flow & Interactive Prototype
Cancellation message
Future feature: Guests can filter search by distance, amenities, ratings, etc.
Compare the features of the new accomodations to the previous one
At the end of the list, guests can send a message to all available hosts
A chance to message to all hosts
Feel free to play around with the prototype! You can scroll down and click on "Contact all hosts" button.
Evaluate
1. Presentation
We made a presentation to the judges of Product Buds! Really proud of the team to have pulled it off! You can check out our presentation below.
2. Lessons learned
Always validate your ideas before getting down to work
This is something I will make sure to always do before conducting any project, to answer the question "Is this a problem worth solving?"
Take the time to explore different ideas, even the crazy ones
For this case study, I think I had not spent as much time brainstorming different product development as I would love to, and I would push my creativity a bit more on the next case study.
Seek users' feedback at every stage, then produce quick iteration
This is the biggest lesson I got from this case study. I should always keep users' needs at every stage, and will explore more the Agile Methodology.
3. If I had more time, I would..
Get more feedback from users and conduct usability testing to make sure the solution solve the users' needs
Develop the filter feature to optimize our solution
