Opening your house to a total stranger — it’s the basic bargain behind every Airbnb transaction. And just a few years ago, the idea of starting a business based on that bargain would have seemed preposterous.
“We’ve been taught as kids that stranger and danger go hand in hand,” Joe Gebbia, Airbnb’s co-founder and chief product officer, said Tuesday during a talk at the annual TED conference in Vancouver. “We were aiming to building Olympic trust between people who had never met.”
For Gebbia and fellow co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky, both trained designers, the answer had to come from design — and specifically from the design of a reputation system for hosts and guests.
To bring the point home, Gebbia walked TEDsters through what he called a “trust challenge”: he asked everyone to unlock their phone and hand it to the person to their left. As a hint of discomfort spread through the audience, Gebbia asked a few questions. What if the person they handed the phone to had introduced themselves? What if they had shared the names of their kids? What if they were known to be great at holding other people’s unlocked phones?
“A well designed reputation system is key for building trust,” Gebbia said.
Some principles and studies guided Airbnb through the process. Research showed that people tend to put more trust in people who are like them, who share their approximate age, geography and other similarities. And they tend to mistrust those who are different. But recommendations from others can help break through those correlations. “If there are less than three reviews, nothing changes,” Gebbia said. But when there are more than 10 reviews, “high reputation beats high similarity.” He added: “The right design helps us overcome biases.”
Baking reviews into Airbnb was a critical element of the site success, but it was not the only one that had to be designed with care.
NOTE CREDIT: http://www.forbes.com/sites/miguelhelft/2016/02/16/how-airbnb-used-design-to-break-through-its-biggest-challenge/?utm_campaign=ForbesTech&utm_source=TWITTER&utm_medium=social&utm_channel=Technology&linkId=21344602#c4cc09428869
