Global Group Creative Director
//Feature Development, User Experience, App Design, Marketing, Strategy, Launch

Airbnb
//Trips, Experiences, Places, Homes

2014—2017

Responsibilities

At Publicis I created a client product consultation group to engage them outside of marketing to help invent new revenue streams, business innovations, and products. As a result, I had the opportunity to work on various Airbnb creative initiatives in both feature concepting, product design, development, brand storytelling and creative marketing. This culminated in an opportunity to consult with Airbnb design team on the User Experience, Customer Research, Workflow, and Design of what was original the independent Trips and Experiences mobile phone application—an app and platform built to help travelers find unique local experiences during their travels. The product launched in late 2016 where Airbnb eventually folded it into their core app, giving consumers a one stop shop offering experiences, trips, and places all in one. I then lead the creative and strategy teams on how we would market the launch the new app and feature, that was meant to be a new revenue stream, product development and market growth area for Airbnb.

Circumstance

Redesigning Travel to Foster Human Connection: Convincing thousands of people to open their homes to strangers is a monumental challenge, but even more ambitious is creating a global community of travelers who engage deeply with the experiences, exploration, and discovery that make travel magical. Through thoughtful UX and community-driven design, Airbnb’s Trips platform reimagines travel by placing human connection at its core.

Reintroducing Magic Through Personal Connection: Addressing the loss of human connection in modern travel, I helped Airbnb design and launch the Trips platform to reinvigorate the sense of wonder and hospitality that defines meaningful journeys. By showcasing how personal connections—with hosts, other travelers, and local communities—can create transformative experiences, the platform ensures that every trip feels unique and magical.
Three Pillars of Reinvention: This reinvention was achieved through a meticulously crafted user experience:
- End-to-End Trip Planning: A seamless, integrated platform that supports every stage of travel, from booking unique stays to discovering memorable activities. The design focuses on ease and exploration, ensuring users can plan their trips effortlessly.
- Expanded Hosting Opportunities: Redesigned tools and intuitive interfaces empower hosts to share more than just their homes, enabling them to showcase their passions and offer tailored experiences that connect guests to local culture.
- On-the-Go Discovery: Features like interactive guidebooks and real-time planning tools help users navigate their trips dynamically, unlocking hidden gems and enabling spontaneous, in-the-moment decisions that make travel unforgettable.

By blending innovative design with a deep understanding of human connection, Airbnb’s Trips platform transforms the travel experience into something truly magical, fostering engagement, discovery, and lasting memories.

Challenge

Design an application that would help Airbnb guests live and experience life in, not simply visit, the places they travelled to.

For Airbnb

Introduce Trips as a Seamless, Complete Experience: Redesign the user journey to highlight the new components of Trips, ensuring a cohesive, intuitive experience that fully delivers on the promise of a comprehensive travel offering beyond Homes. Use clear navigation and design elements to make the distinction and integration of Trips and Experiences effortless for users.
Hero Experiences as a Focal Point: Design immersive, visually striking features that showcase the most unique and exclusive experiences, using these as anchor points to draw in users. Complement these with a rotating selection of attainable Trips and Experiences, utilizing dynamic UI elements to keep content fresh and engaging.
Embed Analysis and Adaptive Design: Integrate real-time metrics and UX testing into the platform, allowing for ongoing performance analysis. Use insights to adapt and optimize platform design for enhanced usability, engagement, and conversion, ensuring the platform evolves with user needs.

For Guests:

Craft Indelible Memories Through UX: Design guest-facing interfaces and storytelling elements that inspire users to create unforgettable memories. Leverage clean, engaging layouts and immersive visuals to highlight experiences that blend novelty, entertainment, inspiration, and education.
Build Tentpole Experiences with Cultural Relevance: Partner with celebrities and cultural icons to design bespoke, localized experiences. Incorporate multimedia elements like video stories, augmented reality previews, and interactive maps to celebrate the places they call home, creating a richer, more personal connection for users.

Solution

Unified Platform for Seamless Travel Planning: Trips & Experiences brings together where you stay, what you do, and the people you meet into a cohesive, user-friendly platform. Designed with simplicity and magic in mind, its focus on Experiences, Places, and Homes creates an intuitive, all-in-one solution for travel planning, with Flights and Services to enhance future functionality. The design ensures travelers, guests, and hosts can navigate effortlessly to craft a personalized journey.
Immersive, Community-Centric Travel Experiences: Through thoughtful UX design, Trips makes travel magical by immersing users in authentic local communities. Features like dynamic content modules and interactive maps highlight unprecedented access to local passions—violin making in Paris, marathon running in Kenya—and hidden gems shared through personal recommendations. These elements build emotional connections between guests and the places they visit.
Personalized, Effortless Exploration: To reimagine travel, Trips eliminates the need to follow generic itineraries. Guests can access unique experiences, extraordinary homes, and curated local favorites through an integrated app. Interactive design elements such as recommendation engines, social interaction hubs, and streamlined booking flows create a more engaging and personal journey, tailored to each traveler.
Empowering People Through Design: The platform extends Airbnb’s people-powered approach by enabling hosts and locals to monetize their passions and interests. UX features like guided onboarding and user-friendly tools help individuals create and showcase experiences effortlessly, fostering a thriving ecosystem of unique offerings. With its human-centered design philosophy, Airbnb transforms not just where people stay, but how they connect, explore, and create meaningful memories.

“Until now, Airbnb has been about homes. Today, Airbnb is launching Trips, bringing together where you stay, what you do, and the people you meet all in one place.
We want to make travel magical again by putting people back at the heart of every trip.”
—Brian Chesky, Airbnb CEO

Results

Bookings growth:

2500% YoY

Launch growth:

1k+ cities

Launch

Trips concept, Platform, development

Experiences

Experiences are handcrafted activities designed and led by local experts – be it a single activity like a Samurai Swordplay workshop or an immersive multi-day experience like learning about and driving classic cars in Malibu. Experiences offer unprecedented access and deep insights into communities and places that you wouldn’t otherwise come across, such as Truffle Hunting in Tuscany or the grime music scene in London.

Trips launches with around 500 Experiences in 12 cities worldwide, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, Detroit, Havana, London, Paris, Florence, Nairobi, Cape Town, Tokyo and Seoul. From today, budding hosts in those and a further 39 cities worldwide can request to list their Experience.

Airbnb Experiences can be anything from cooking classes to guided tours. Hosts often have a lot of knowledge of their local area, and by giving them an opportunity to share that knowledge, Airbnb moved into an interesting place in the tourism industry.

A number of Experiences will also be available where guests can give something back to communities through non-profit organizations. In Detroit for example, Khali Sweeney provides an opportunity to go behind-the-scenes at his Downtown Boxing Gym that provides local children with an after-school program of healthy snacks, homework time, and boxing lessons.

Places – Guidebooks, Meet ups and Audio Walks

Trips brings places to life through the people that live there, reflecting the recommendations of hundreds of thousands of Airbnb hosts, neighborhood insiders and local influencers and is an alternative to aggregated tourist lists that funnel people to the same places.

With Insider Guidebooks, Airbnb has identified cultural experts and neighborhood insiders to recommend the hidden gems within their city. Find the perfect run from a marathoner, the best dive bar from a local mixologist and the next great undiscovered restaurant from an up-and-coming chef. 100 Insider Guidebooks will be available at launch in six cities – Los Angeles, San Francisco, Havana, Nairobi, Detroit and Seoul – with more coming soon.

As well as Insider Guidebooks, Places includes over one million individual recommendations worldwide from Airbnb’s home hosts, recommending their favourite hidden gems in their neighborhoods, from cafes and restaurants to parks and other local attractions. A partnership with restaurant booking platform, Resy, will make it possible for people in future to book tables at great local restaurants directly through the Airbnb app.

Airbnb has also struck an exclusive partnership with Detour to offer access to amazing experiential audio walking tours allowing people to discover neighborhoods in a totally unique and authentic way. At launch, audio tours will initially be available for Los Angeles with San Francisco, Paris, London, Tokyo and Seoul to follow by Spring 2017.

With Trips, Airbnb also wants to make travel more social, helping connect the thousands of Airbnb users in a city on any given night. Meet ups within Places will let local businesses host one-off or regular events for Airbnb guests and locals to connect with each other.

Homes

With three million homes available to book across 191 countries, Airbnb offers the largest and most diverse range of unique accommodation options for travelers which will now be available to book alongside Experiences in available cities.

trips Design development & execution

When Airbnb set out to design their app, they wanted it to be as welcoming and helpful as a gracious host. Using Material Design principles, the company took a direct approach to communication, creating a visual language that’s clear and understandable to its diverse user base. This conversational interface has garnered Airbnb over 84,000 five-star reviews and a Material Design Award for focused efficiency in 2016.

We started by defining a set of core characteristics to guide the design. In order to appeal to travelers and hosts from any region or native language, the app had to feel unified, universal, conversational, and iconic. This meant streamlining essential tasks, and ensuring that each design element fit into a larger system. Airbnb replaced the left navigation bar on Android with the bottom navigation bar that now exists on both iOS and Android, to better unify the cross-platform experience. Karri Saarinen, Design Lead at Airbnb explains how the switch served to reinforce the company’s vision:

Host-supplied photography is crucial to the Airbnb experience. Whether it’s a rustic home in the high desert or an urban loft, rich imagery gives users a window into each destination. Letting photography lead gives the UI a bold and uncluttered appearance, and makes navigating from listing to listing easy and comfortable.