Overview

Couchsurfing enhances cultural exchanges but raises safety concerns. Our project aims to optimize the original app and create product to address the safety and trust issues. We analyzed the current couchsurfing app problems and user-cases, identified safety issues, and addressed user needs to enhance protection. By expanding our focus from women to all users, we created an inclusive design, ensure all users have a safe and trustworthy experience.

Objective

Challenges

• Extending safety features for female users to an inclusive design that ensures all users feel safe and secure.

• Designing hardware to enhance safety during Couchsurfing, fostering trustworthy and healthy relationships between hosts and travelers.

• Analyzing and refining the user journey to create a more comprehensive product and upgrade the app's security.

  
  

Problem Breakdown

Research

We began by searching online forums and social media, and here’s what we discovered…

Using forum data and analyzing the current app problems, we identified safety concerns related to Couchsurfing. Additional, I interviewed and surveyed over 50 participants to understand their use-cases and struggles. Here’s the common painpoints:

Brainstorm ＆Ideations

Brainstorming impactful ideas and prioritising them with designers and users

After we had done our research to identify the problems, I facilitated a design sprint workshop with the users and other UX designer teammates to prioritize the problems together as a team and propose solutions.

We divided into 3 parts…

After discussing and proposing various solutions, I realized we could address user pain points more comprehensively by breaking down the problems into steps and further dividing details to enhance safety and trust. This approach allows us to systematically solve the issues and improve the overall experience.

Design Principles

User Feedback

To evaluate whether our new Couchsurfing app has improved users' sense of security, we conducted physical interviews with 10 people, asking them to use both the original and enhanced apps and compare their experiences. Overall, testers gave positive feedback, suggesting that our enhancements could improve Couchsurfing safety and reduce dangerous incidents. However, more testing is needed to identify any redundant functions and further refine the design.

Learnings