Airbnb: Halloween Icon + UI Takeover

What is Airbnb's mission? 

Airbnb is an app that bridges guests around the world to ‘Belong Anywhere,’ as guests rent out their homes and spaces to welcome adventure. With over 2 billion guest arrivals with 5 million hosts growing, what better way to bring guests and experiences into not only your home but also educate on celebrations and holidays, like Halloween. 

Why Halloween for Airbnb?

Halloween is not a holiday celebrated around the world. But when it is, it can be as big as festivals or as local as handing out candy and even pennies. What could it look like to get a glimpse of Halloween into your user experience to draw more users to explore to celebrate other cultures Holidays?

Choice to have Halloween mode? 

I find it important to allow users to opt out of experiences if they do not wish for it. So before showing the spooky version, I let the user choose their own adventure. 

If they choose the spooky option, they will be educated along the way with how countries celebrate Halloween. Tool tips will appear an icon to show a resemblance and experience they may encounter on their trip. 

Airbnb's Icons

Airbnb’s icon set is a simple monochromatic icon with a mix of building structures, consistent shapes, and unified line weight to mimic home types and their experience. Their creativity in pushing their brand of 'home away from home' feel is in their top nav highlighting the homes. I chose to create a custom collection and icon for just ‘Haunted Mansions’ for users to search haunted places around the world. 

It was fun to research and apply Halloween trends to the tool bar, like:

• 'Explore' icon = Lollipops shape to match the magnifying glass 
• 'Wishlists' icon = Candy bag to hold all their favorite candy/places
• 'Trips' icon = The friendly neighborhood Airbnb ghost
• 'Inbox' icon = Tombstone that people visit and talk to (the dead)
• 'Profile' icon = A skeleton to outline your profile

The other icons in the spooky takeover include:

• Haunted Mansion (top nav bar)
• Candy (like a home or experience to add to candy bag)
• Pumpkin lantern (when exploring experience)
• Penny (when exploring experiences)
• Potion Pot (highly ranked and top pick potion)
• Web (filter your search on the web)

What did I learn? 

Not only do I love the user experience of Airbnb, but also the fun challenge to bring the holiday to their fingertips. This would be a fun exploration to do for multiple holidays or to personalize the users experience based on where they live or where they are going. I enjoy designing experiences, in person and on a device and loved this challenge to choose an app that does a great both with both.