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Airbnb Summer 2023 ReleaseAirbnb Winter 2022 Release
Team Management · Product & Design Direction · UI/UX Design · Prototyping
Twice a year, Airbnb hosts a launch event to unveil both new products and key improvements to our core service. In 2024, I led the team responsible for the majority of these essential enhancements. While many updates were rolled out gradually over the year, the Winter Release provided a moment to showcase and celebrate the upgrades we made to the primary booking flow, including search, filters, and maps.
Our goal is always to make Airbnb simpler and more enjoyable to use, without losing sight of what makes the product successful. These changes show that thoughtful design can benefit both our guests and the business.
Over the years, we've streamlined the initial search flow to capture the three critical pieces of information we need from guests: where, when, and who. We’re always looking for ways to make this experience both comprehensive and supportive. This year, we made improvements to help guests quickly get back into a previous search, discover personalized destination suggestions, and easily enter a location name.
Our research showed that many guests return to Airbnb multiple times during their booking journey, often using the same search parameters. To get those guests back into a search quickly, we added recent searches as early in the flow as possible. One tap allows guests to pick up where they left off.
For guests who are still undecided about where to travel, we updated our destination recommendations to be more personalized. We use learnings from a guest's past searches and trips, combined with the interests they've provided in their Airbnb Passport, to suggest a range of destinations both local and international.
Finally, we updated our search autocomplete system to be more structured and location-aware. For popular destinations, we now provide nested recommendations of places in the area that guests tend to stay near.
As part of a previous release, our creative team illustrated more than 80 famous landmarks to use as passport stamps in a guest's profile. We wanted to expand that system to represent any of the over 50,000 locations a guest might search for. Instead of illustrating each one by hand, we built a modular icon framework that combines components representing climate, population density, and other geographical features to form a icon for each type of location. In the end, we created over 750 unique icon combinations.
The next step in the search process is for guests to refine their search using filters. Our goal is to make it easy for guests to set their preferences, without the frustration of overfiltering and ending up with too few results. Traditionally, this step involved scrolling through a long, tedious list of checkboxes. We redesigned our filters to be shorter, clearer, and more engaging, making it easier for guests to scan options, add what they need, and skip what they don’t.
Alongside the updated filters panel, we also introduced Recommended For You. These are the top three filters, personalized to each guest based on a combination of their past filter usage, current search query, and popular filters used by other guests traveling to the same destination.
To really make these filters special, alongside our partners at Buck, the team crafted 50 brand new, highly detailed 3D icons. These icons combined the subject and silhouette of our existing 2D illustrations with the style of our miniature world marketing videos.
Year after year, user research tells us the same two things. First, about half our guests exclusively use the map when searching for a place to stay. Second, location is ranked one of the top two most important factors in choosing the right stay, alongside price. Given its importance, we are always looking at ways to provide more location context and upgrades to our map experience.
One of the biggest changes we made was to the base map style. While most digital maps are geared towards car travel and directions, our goal was to make our maps more human and exploration focused. It needs to align closely with Airbnb’s brand style, while offering guests full-featured, travel-oriented content.
Using Google Maps' cloud styling tool, we updated everything from ground cover colors and road label styles to the visibility of various POI categories. We elevated elements such as landmarks and popular walkable areas to help guests orient themselves to the location.
We also used this opportunity to update the style of various map controls and pins, ensuring they align with the broader updates happening across Airbnb’s Design System.