BeWelcome
Context
BeWelcome is a hospitality exchange platform that lets you share a place to stay, connect with travelers, meet up, and find accommodation on your travels. BeWelcome is a free, open-source, not-for-profit, democratic community.
Business Goals
The communication aspect of BeWelcome is not user-friendly. The website interface is dated and difficult to navigate, which makes it hard for travelers and hosts to communicate with each other effectively. This lack of communication can lead to a loss of confidence and reliability in the platform, ultimately making users feel uncomfortable and insecure using the platform.
Research Goals
- Identify why users use BeWelcome.
- Identify the purpose for the new redesign.
- Identify user’s needs and goals
Target Audience
Hosts
Travellers
Current Product Users
Success Criteria
Usability tests will determine the project’s success.
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Secondary Research & Assumptions
My goal with secondary research was to learn as much as I can about the community. This helped me conduct better user interviews, craft assumptions and create a provisional persona.
Assumptions
I came up with assumptions by reading content from the community forums, both internal and external and facebook groups.
- People on BeWelcome travel and host to connect, build new friendships, explore new places and learn new cultures.
- The community would mainly use BeWelcome on their phone than on a desktop website.
- Couchsurfers and hosts judge hosts or travellers based on eachothers references and on profile information.
- Hosts and couchsurfers would like to know more about their hosts/travellers before deciding to say yes to the meet/stay.
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Empathize Using Primary Interviews
I conducted user interviews and user surveys to gain insights into users’ thoughts, feelings, and motivations behind using BeWelcome.
User Interviews
Based on:
- Why users use BeWelcome and their motivation and goals
- How users use the service
- How users decide to host a traveler and vice-versa
- What information would a host need before accepting a traveler
- Past experiences when using the service
Insights and Mapping
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Assumptions Validated
- People on BeWelcome travel and host to connect, build new friendships, explore new places and learn new cultures.
- The community would mainly use BeWelcome on their phone than on a desktop website.
- Couchsurfers and hosts judge hosts or travellers based on eachothers references and on profile information.
- Hosts and couchsurfers would like to know more about their hosts/travellers before deciding to say yes to the meet/host/stay.
User Persona
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User Needs
- A trustworthy platform to build new friendships, explore new places, and learn new cultures.
- Users want a mobile-first platform.
- Users want to easily find other users’ profile information and references.
- Users need to easily communicate with other users on the platform.
- Users need a platform that encourages traveling and hosting.
HMW Statements
- How might we create a platform that feels trustworthy, that can help users connect and explore?
- How might we create a mobile-first platform?
- How might we make it easy for users to find information and references of other users on the platform?
- How might we make it easy for users to communicate with each other on the platform?
Usability Findings
I conducted usability tests with Useberry using 5 participants from users of BeWelcome and my findings helped me validate my designs to move forward with the process
- Users could successfully navigate and use the implemented solutions.
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Solutions
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Interactive Prototype
Next Steps
After the successful usability tests, the next steps would be to implement the designs and set up systems to measure the app’s usability, performance, and any potential issues in the design solution.
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