About
October 2019
This project was the culmination of a weeklong product management bootcamp that I completed with my coworkers as a part of our Digital Technology Leadership Program. Led by General Assembly, we spent a week looking at all the different parts of being a product manager.
My team of 5 people chose to complete our weeklong project on Airbnb and creating a new feature for the app.
Process
Opportunity Analysis. Identified a problem statement by conducting initial user interviews and doing a competitive analysis.
User Research. Created a persona and utilized it to focus on our approach for both design and marketing.
Ideation. Brainstorming as a team and picking our best idea.
Prototyping. We created a higher fidelity paper prototype to use in our testing.
Usability Testing. Interviewed target users on our paper prototype and used feedback to refine our design.
High Fidelity Prototype. Created a high fidelity prototype that visualized our product on the Airbnb app.
Created a timeline and backlog. We created a timeline for the development of the product as well as a backlog that prioritized the features we wanted from our product.
Opportunity Analysis
Users search multiple websites to get in depth travel information before confirming a booking. Users would like to book more authentic and unique experiences through Airbnb.
Ideation
Based off of what we know about our persona and opportunity analysis, we ideated and brainstormed and came up with the features that we wanted to include.
1. Prior to booking, users will have the ability to filter lodging by nearby activities they want to do during their stay through various methods:
Adding on to the current filter feature when looking for a stay
Visual representation through header bar feature so users know that it’s there
Map view based on location when a user clicks on the map
2. After their stay, the user can rank the lodging experience by “uniqueness” and authenticity:
Included in the review section
Paper Prototype
This is the prototype that we used to conduct usability testing. Based on our results from usability testing, we reiterated our design into a high fidelity prototype shown below.
High Fidelity Prototype
This was the prototype that we created for our final pitch of the product. We did our best to incorporate the product into the app as seamlessly as possible.
Timeline and Next Steps
After refining our design, it’s time to move into the development phase of the project. We developed an MVP and a timeline so it’s easier to create a backlog of our features and prioritize them for the deadline.
MVP
Our MVP will focus on a few specific areas (cities) that we can implement our product. This is the best way to do it because we need enough time to build up data for our product. This way, we can test out the feature with a few larger metropolitan areas and test its success metrics.
Timeline and Next Steps
This was our timeline for development as well as next steps. We needed significant time to produce data as well as completing iterative cycles of development and design.
Next steps are the continuously update features, get some reviews and marketing going and create a scalable solution to implement it across different global regions.
Reflection
This project was done over the course of a very long week so we didn’t really have enough time to focus on all the important aspects of product management. Here’s my review and reflection of the project itself and how my team did as well as things I would have done differently.
What we did well:
Designing and Iteration. We spent a good amount of time designing and refining the prototype
User Interviews. These were limited based on time constraints but the interviews we did went well. We got a lot of info from our participants that allowed us to make decisions based off what we learned
What I would do next time:
Market Research and Competitive Analysis. We could have focused more on the value that this brought to the users and the potential size of the market.
Success Metrics. We should have created a plan with success metrics so that we can tell whether or not the product was doing well. This way, we know what to look for when we are developing and implementing the product.
MVP Focus. I would create a backlog of the features as well as prioritization and also would have focused on a robust MVP that we could get to market.