How would you design furniture for Airbnb?

Clarification - airbnb is designing furniture, ability for people to rent furniture through Airbnb, ability of people to buy furniture through airbnb - answer - ability to rent furniture through Airbnb

Goal - Airbnb supports people in having a space of their dreams so having furniture for that space makes sense, user acquisition is the initial goal is my assumption

User segments (basis opurpose of app usage)- normal app bookers (who book listing), listers (people who list their space in Airbnb), renting companies/retail partners - answer - looking at the ecosystem it makes sense to initially focus on listers as if they can have better furniture in their homes this will lead to better booker experince and also achieve Airbnb mission.

Pain points (use case and how I am prioritizing, points bolded):

1) Which existing furniture to replace - will not priortize as that initially can be a human decision 

2) Furniture item recommendation - which furniture item they should rent eg - bed, couch etc - I will prioritize this as users have multiple items list and recommending this will enhance user exp.

3) Within that item type, what to buy - what kind of bed? - I will again prioritize this as it is an extention of above point and also airbnb can help in making that user decision.

4) from where to rent - marketplace, retailers, third party firms, manufactures - will not priortize as this is not an immidiate pain point, they care more about getting different options. 

5) Quality and trust - will prioritize this as affects user exp

6) return and exchange - will not prioritize as this is a good to have 

Solutions- will be integrating this feature within Airbnb initially

Recommendation of items: 

1) use initial survey as customers come to the app, 2) ask users to upload image and use neural netowork to recommend items, 3) use past reviews to see any complaints on furniture, 4) review past image upload to evaluate quality of furniture

Choosing items/enhancing decision to rent - 

5) use listing info such as size, layout etc to decide the size of furniture etc, 6) map this listing to other third party data and see what kinds of items will go with this lister and make top 3 recos, add 7) save feature to review items later, 8) allow lister to create collection to increase decision conversion 

Quality

9) threhsold on image quality, 10) 360 video, 11) badge program to show trusted renters, 12) past customer testimonials. 

Solution Priority - basis impact and effort and user goal - choose 1, 3, 6, 7, 10, 12

Tradeoff - users might not fill survey that may affect engagement and hence churn, using third party data might be tricky

Metrics - # of rentals/user/week, %of items searched outside the ones recommended, % of users that made atleast one rental. 

Northstar - # of active user per week