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Airbnb case study: How design helps cross-culture business
One of the recent design-related events I attended was eBay and StubHub: Marketplace Panel and After Party. At the panel, Katie M. Dill, head of Experience Design at Airbnb talked about “Trust”, “Diversity” and “How to maintain branding cross-culture”, which inspired me to do a case study about Airbnb and learn how design helps with its cross-culture business.
Trust
Building trust essentially means approaching opportunities and challenges with a design-thinking mentality. All the speakers at the panel talked about how design has played a role in building trust — they all put the human experience at the center.
“Trust…brings together what is desirable from a human point of view with what is technologically feasible and economically viable.” -IDEO
How does Airbnb help build trust between hosts and guests?
According to Katie, the teams are dedicated to building trust and cultivating a transparent community marketplace. It breaks down to social reputation, communication through profiles, and finding a connecting point. She mentioned there is a video online that explores how Airbnb designs for trust from Joe Gebbia, the co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Airbnb. I found the video very insightful, and would like to share what I thought were the key points (watch his TED talk to learn more).
“…We are aiming to build olympic trust between people who’ve never met, could design make that happen? Is it possible to design for trust?”
“A well designed reputation system is the key to building trust”
At the TED talk, Joe demonstrated one of the challenges they faced by asking the audience unlock their phones and hand them over to the person on their left. The audience experienced the kind of trust challenge that Airbnb was facing between it’s…
