Airbnb is a well-known global hospitality company that connects people around the world to unique travel experiences. The company culture values inclusivity, collaboration, and experimentation. As a result, employees are encouraged to take risks and challenge themselves to innovate and come up with creative solutions to problems.

I spent two years at Airbnb on a specialized team that helped every team on Airbnb on six week stints while I worked alongside the DLS team on the design language system in preparation for Airbnb's IPO in 2020. Here are some of the things I worked on in that time.

One project I was very passionate about was setting up a grid guidelines for Airbnb's design language system. It took weeks researching breakpoints and determining grid sizes that are easy to understand and easier to implement. Designers were able to design for these breakpoints at speed, drawing consistency across the entire product.

The Pro Host team found through reviews left by guests that there were some hosts who posted photos of certain items that were not there. This sparked interest in a 'Fix It' feature that would email hosts to reconfirm items at their stay in the hosts home based on reviews left by guests and verify that photos posted are indeed real. (i.e. Photos of a pool but pool cannot be accessed).

The Host team did was looking to increase the quality of listings on Airbnb by giving contextual tips to hosts on their listings. We spent six weeks generating a list of tips that hosts would be able to add to their listing to improve the guests experience. We then compiled that list into a set of priorities that we would notify the host when looking at their listing.

Originally, sharing listings was as simple as copying the URL and messaging or emailing it to someone. But there was an opportunity to do better. In five weeks, I, alongside another UX designer, were able to come up with a solution with devs on a share icon that would give the user multiple sharing options to share the listing.

Earhart is an evolving set of reusable components and the API that is used to compile designs and copy to the Search experience on Airbnb. Earhart seeks to provide uniformity and consistency of the guest search experience across current verticals while providing flexibility for the integration of future ones.

Earhart components are a layer on top of Airbnb's Design Language System (DLS). Search components are driven by business goals, while DLS components are driven by a desire to provide visual consistency throughout the user experience and development process.

DLS is a front-end framework, and Search components reach into the backend – Search is responsible for API latency, API bloat, etc. and is responsible for corresponding metrics like performance. DLS design choices are foundational to Explore design choices – we are building on top of the work of DLS.