Self-initiated Project, 2023
Designing an Airbnb feature to split payments
Role
Research Wireframing UI Design Prototyping User Testing
Tools
Figma Notion Miro Maze
Timeline
3 months
The Solution
Users responsible for booking a group trip through Airbnb and then splitting the total cost of the trip amongst guests were experiencing stress and friction surrounding payments.
They felt that being the one to pay upfront and then collect money later was burdensome and asking people for money was awkward and waiting for it inconvenient if the person took a long time to pay them back.
Goals
My personal goals for this project were to get better at using new figma prototyping features. I spent a lot of time prototyping on this project which was fun.
Actual project goals for my partner and I were to reduce payment friction, and enhance the group travel experience. If this were a real project I would also want to add in some business goals such as increase the bookings for group travel of parties who are booking a trip for three or more people.
Research
Our research began with user surveys to figure out the main pain points of planning and paying for a group trip. We had 20 participants take the survey. From there, we went on to conduct user interviews to gain deeper insights into some of these problems. We conducted four user interviews. Our results from this user data are summarized below:
Competitive analysis
A quick competitive analysis gave us some idea of what features our competitors had and what we wanted to prioritize to accomplish the goals set.
Some of the questions we asked ourselves were:
How might we help group travelers to instantly request, calculate, and settle their respective shares for accommodation expenses?
How might we foster a sense of fairness and trust within travel groups by offering an automated system that accurately divides expenses and handles financial transactions?
User flows
Two different entry points began to emerge for us during the documentation of user flows.
The first, was at the time of booking, user requests money to split total with guests.
The second was after booking user requests reimbursement from guests.
These two options became important as we started sketching and designing as we realized we were interested in testing both designs out to see which one resonated with our users. Would users rather have a solution that splits the bill right away or would they prefer to split the bill after one person has reserved the accommodation?
Designing
Some sketches of initial ideas
First direction: splitting cost at the moment of reserving
Here's what the first direction ended up looking like. Users reserved the Airbnb and had 24 hours to complete the payment amongst all parties in order to secure the reservation. A countdown timer told them how much time was left.
Second direction: splitting the cost after booking
This flow split the cost of the group travel after the reservation was secured. This meant one person paid upfront and then was paid back by everyone else on the trip. We felt that adding a Venmo integration would be the easiest thing to simplify the backend work for Airbnb as we didn't want Airbnb to have to deal with reimbursing the individual who had paid upfront.
User Testing
We tested our designs out with 10 users realized that our countdown timer wasn't clear enough, the experience of adding guests to the bill was a bit confusing, and users preferred to split the bill at the time of booking rather than after.
Final designs
We improved the guest/ friend search as well as finalized the first direction since it was the one our users preferred. We thought the Venmo integration reduced payment friction so also kept those designs. To make the time left to pay more clear, got rid of the countdown timer and instead added a pink banner at the top of the reservation screen so it was the first thing users saw. To view prototypes for this project, you can visit this figma.
