Airbnb Product Sense: Scoping and Designing an In-App 'Experience' Feature
Company: Airbnb
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
You are a product manager at Airbnb, asked to design "Airbnb Experience" as part of the Airbnb app. Decide what the feature should be, choose the users you are designing for, lay out the product and its main flows in the app, prioritize what to build first, and explain how you would judge whether it succeeds.
```hint Settle the term first
The name can be read more than one way. Agree on what it means, then trace one user's path through it in the app from start to finish and look for the moment they are most likely to give up.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- Does "Airbnb Experience" mean bookable activities led by local hosts, or a way for guests to get a realistic feel for a listing before they book?
- Is the design for guests, for the people who would host or supply it, or for both sides of the marketplace?
- Is this a new launch inside the app or a redesign of something that already exists?
- What should success mean for Airbnb: more bookings, more revenue per trip, or more engagement between trips?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- A stated interpretation of "Airbnb Experience", the scope that follows from it, and the goal it serves for Airbnb
- User groups on both sides of the marketplace compared, with one chosen to design for and the reason
- Pain points from that user's journey, ranked, with in-app solutions tied to them
- Prioritization with explicit criteria, including trust, safety and quality controls on what is offered
- A primary success metric with guardrails, plus the key risks and how to reduce them
### Follow-up Questions
- Whichever reading you chose, what supply-side work (hosts, content, quality checks) has to exist before the first guests see the feature, and how would you get there?
- How would you place it in the app so it adds value without pulling guests away from booking a stay?
- If you had chosen the other reading of the term, which parts of your design would change and which would stay?
Overview: A product design question asking how to design Airbnb Experience inside the Airbnb app. It tests how a candidate resolves an ambiguous brief, chooses users on a two-sided marketplace, designs and prioritizes key in-app flows, addresses trust and safety, and defines success metrics with guardrails.