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Challenge
Give couchsurfers the information and tools to experience the places they visit like the people who live there.
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Solution
Develop a feature called Local Advice that integrates into existing user profiles, replacing the website’s discussion forums.
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Results
Updated site profiles and city pages that position Couchsurfing as a go-to for travelers looking for local insights into places they visit.
Go where the locals go. Years before Airbnb, adventurous travelers were finding lodging with locals around the world through the travel community site Couchsurfing. With a new platform powering the site, Couchsurfing was looking for innovative ways to help travelers explore the cities in which they’re staying. Drawing on our own staff’s passion for travel, we helped concept, design, and build multiple new features for Couchsurfing’s city pages and user profiles.
Areas of Expertise
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Planning for Spontaneity
Through our research, we discovered that many couchsurfers wait until they’ve arrived at their destinations to make plans. To be spontaneous, they need a concise, portable guide that includes logistical information on things like parking and transportation, currency conversion, and access to ATMs.
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Sharing Travel Tips
We added interest-based tag feature to user profiles, allowing couchsurfers to share information about activities and places they loved. Visiting couchsurfers could easily access and filter this information, ensuring they were getting the recommendations and advice they wanted.
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Build, Test, Rinse, Repeat
Our team worked in a series of two-week sprints, which allowed us to focus on prototyping and testing. During these sprints, our UX and Development teams worked in close collaboration, ensuring that decisions were made quickly, and solutions were integrated smoothly.
Summary
We helped concept, design, build, and launch new Couchsurfing features that let users ask for advice from locals and share the places they’ve found. Our features help build the Couchsurfing community online, and allow couchsurfers to get the most out of their travels.
