In the clip below, Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky explains that one route to
a great UX and word-of-mouth growth is designing the perfect experience for one
person:
“How do you make something for a million people? I don’t know where to start. But if
you pick one person, study them, and take their journey, you can actually build
something really personal. You can design something and keep iterating until they
love it. Don’t stop improving it until that person loves it, and you’re not allowed
to move to the second person until the first person loves it. Then you get the
second person and keep iterating until they love it. And so on.”
As Brian argues, designing the perfect experience for one person is a much easier
place to start than trying to design something for a million people. And when people
truly love your service, they become your marketing department.
He uses storyboarding and tries to imagine a “10-star experience” for an Airbnb
check-in as an example:
“A 5-star rating typically means nothing bad happened. But what if there was a 6th
star?”
He proposes the following ever-improving scenarios:
6 stars: You get to your Airbnb and there’s a bottle of wine and fruit waiting for
you with a hand-written note
7 stars: A limo picks you up from the airport, and when you get to the house there’s
a surfboard because the host knows you like surfing
8 stars: You ride back from the airport on a giant elephant and there’s a parade in
your honor
9 stars: You land at the airport and there’s 5,000 teenagers cheering your name and
you do a press conference in the front lawn of your Airbnb (”The Beetles Check-In”)
