Airbnb: Designing the Whole Experience
Featuring Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, Nathan Blecharczyk
In 2009, Airbnb was dying. Revenue was flat, growth was slow, and the founders could not figure out why. Trained as designers, Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, and Nathan Blecharczyk decided to diagnose the product the way designers do: go look at it in person. They flew to New York, stayed with their hosts, and found the problem was not the website at all. It was something embarrassingly simple, fixable without writing a line of code, and once they fixed it revenue in the city roughly doubled.
For anyone building a product, this is a case about the parts of your customer's experience that happen off your platform, in the gaps you have quietly handed off to operations, support, or chance. It sharpens the question of when you last went through your own full journey, first contact to finished job, as a customer would. The thought exercise Chesky used to push his team past industry norms, and how to run it yourself, is the part the app holds back.
Frequently asked questions
What happened when Airbnb was dying in 2009?
In 2009 Airbnb had flat revenue and slow growth, and the founders could not figure out why. Trained as designers, Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, and Nathan Blecharczyk flew to New York to stay with their hosts in person, and discovered the problem was not the website at all but something simple they could fix without writing code.
Why did Airbnb's founders go visit hosts in person?
As designers, they diagnosed the product the way designers do: by looking at it in real life rather than only in the data. Staying with hosts let them see the parts of the experience that happened off the platform, which is where the actual problem turned out to be.
What was Brian Chesky's 11-star experience exercise?
It is a thought exercise Chesky used to push his team past industry norms by imagining what a 5-star, then 7-star, then 11-star version of the experience would feel like, even if it sounded absurd. The point was to stretch thinking far beyond "good enough" so the team could work backward to remarkable but achievable improvements.
What can product and design teams learn from Airbnb's experience design?
Much of a customer's experience happens off your platform, in the gaps you have handed to operations, support, or chance, so it is worth walking your own full journey from first contact to finished job as a customer would. The fix often lives where you stopped paying attention. CaseBook turns this into a move you apply to your own product, with an AI coach that reads your answer.