Other select projects
The body copy for the emails and landing pages was provided by a content strategist. As the principal designer, I created all other systems, content, design, illustrations, headlines and photo selections shown below.
Guest email lifecycle system —
Upgrading an underperforming, hodgepodge email system. Examining when we email potential guests and with what intent. Rebuilding emails on a more consistent yet flexible module system that will allow faster experimentation and iteration.
Below, exploring designs for editorial content-heavy emails to engage users with low current travel intent. The raw material to later refine into a modular system.
Below, an unfinished draft of email modules. This is weighted more heavily towards users who have shown recent interest in travel.
Isolated Peer Recommendations —
Users generally engage with the Airbnb platform only when travel is already on their minds. I wanted to create reasons for users to engage with us much more often, even in their hometown, in a way that was still aligned with with our mission/brand of “helping people feel like they belong and can live like a local.”
The idea was to leverage users’ pride in their neighborhood and ask them to steer visiting Airbnb users (ones they weren't yet actively hosting) to their favorite local spots. Naturally, opting in would also enable these volunteers to take advantage of the same system when they are traveling. I liked this because it leverages an existing pride-based behavior and it creates a new, sustainable data source.
I was skeptical about Yelp-style public reviews because evergreen, public reviews can make locals wary of sharing quiet, local spots for fear of being overrun by tourists. I also considered assigning each traveler a temporary “concierge” to talk them through what they were looking for, but thought that was likely asking too much interaction of users.
My favorite option was to send a push alert to a few dozen locals and share the tallied results with both the visitor and the locals. This lets the visitor go with the vote-winner or not, based on their preference. It also provides a variable reward and dialog for the locals to see how you align with your own community. The results should be ephemeral and NOT shareable to lessen any snowball effect in popularity.