![]() Simplicity has been a major driver over the life of the business, but especially the last year of growth. With these new additions to the Airbnb experience, the team made certain to build them in an inclusive way. It is about truth reducing ideas to their fundamental essence, to where they can’t be distilled any further.” In so many ways, says Chesky, technology can make people feel silly, or that they don’t know something they should. “When people think about great design, it is simple. ![]() One of Chesky’s great design heroes is industrial designer Dieter Rams. Problem solving, says Chesky, is not just about how things look in the end, but how they work to deliver, in this case, a connection beyond travel to create “a system of trust that allows strangers to live together.” The factors brought on by the pandemic obviously made that end more complicated, but the designer-led approach to addressing new needs and answering new questions allowed the company to create and better meet the needs of its users. For the host, that meant greater security, a deeper connection to other hosts for advice and help, ease of communication across language barriers, and a cleaner process of onboarding as a host. What do they need? What is their journey?” For the vaccinated traveler, that journey involved faster Wifi, flexibility on timing, traveling (and, really, living) with a family, maybe even pets, longer stays, and a willingness to consider a wider range of destinations. People can become statistics, mass experiments, cohorts and metrics. “To design really well, you have to put yourself in the shoes of the person you’re designing for. “We have so much data in Silicon Valley,” he says. When Chesky talks about approaching Airbnb’s post-pandemic revival, he seems to always root back to problem solving. Herewith, a few lessons gleaned from the collective effort. The result is a series of more than 50 upgrades that are both beautiful and incredibly handy, addressing precisely why and how people are traveling during the pandemic. Most recently, on November 6, Airbnb dropped its Winter Release, its latest iteration of upgrades and designs to make the user experience even more intuitive and simple. The company’s The Summer of Responsible Travel campaign landed in April, detailing safety protocols for Airbnb hosts and travelers (a global ban on parties, a 24/7 neighborhood support hotline and discounts for hosts interested in noise detection services from Minut), followed in May by an additional 100 new features on the app that played up flexibility in dates, property matching, and destinations. This was a once-in-a-century opportunity for us.” Chesky says: “There was a huge travel rebound over the summer because of the vaccine. ![]() ![]() What’s more, the Wifi filter was used more than 288 million times in the last year, making it clear what was at the top of every Airbnb user’s mind. In fact, he says, more than 20 percent of trips booked on the app between July and September were for at least a month’s stay and 45 percent were for no less than a week. “We came back from the holidays into 2021 and figured we couldn’t sit on our laurels,” recalls Chesky. What came next, though, was ultimately a design-driven rebound that helped formalize an IPO and cement Airbnb as one of the most inventive companies to be born from Silicon Valley in the last decade. The world had changed and the company needed to scale back to find its footing. Instead, Airbnb lost 80 percent of its business in just eight weeks of pandemic fallout, and Chesky found himself writing a very different type of letter to his team in May 2020: one lamenting struggle and layoffs. According to Ive, when he left Apple in 2019 and formed a creative collective called LoveFrom, Chesky called and asked to be one Ive's first clients.Ĭhesky, who studied at the Rhode Island School of Design before cofounding the home-sharing service in 2008, told the Journal that he "never understood design on a deeper level until I worked with Jony." Ive is now advising Chesky on everything from logo design to strategy, and since the onset of the pandemic, Chesky and Ive talk almost every day.Chesky had originally written the founder’s letter for a hoped-for IPO in March 2020. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal published Wednesday, Ive opened up about his friendship with Brian Chesky, the 41-year-old cofounder and CEO of Airbnb. "You aren't going to cut your way to innovation," Ive said, though Airbnb later axed 1,900 roles.įormer Apple design chief Jony Ive saw plenty of ups and downs during his 27 years at the iPhone-maker, and now he's sharing his wisdom with another generation of innovators. The pair talk almost every day and Ive weighed in when Airbnb was mulling job cuts. Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky counts former Apple design chief Jony Ive as one of his closest advisers.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |