Holiday Swap
A social-driven way to travel the world for less.
Client
Holiday Swap
Role
Lead, Product Design
Team
1 x CTO
2 x Product Managers
3 x Engineers
Contextual goal
Holiday Swap is a home exchange platform connecting travelers across 185+ countries. I led the redesign of the 2.0 app, optimising data-driven features like profiles, listings, and bookings to drive user growth.
The app enabled users to connect, facilitate home swaps and secure unique stays for less, compared to other travel accommodation. In the company’s growth phase, they needed to increase active user engagement on the app. I worked with the team to understand the vision, and led sessions to ideate for their strategy. Home swapping can be a new concept for many, and the challenge was to find ways to prove value for users still in discovery.
Product thinking
To dissect the problem, I synthesised research insights and facilitated ideation workshops to help the team gain clarity on key barriers.
At the iterative stage, I created user flows and prototypes to explore an end-to-end journey from onboarding to discovery, space creation to an integrated chat and swap process. The hypothesis we tested was by providing a sociable way for users to discover others and homes, it would create a returning mentality to engage and facilitate swaps.
Swap unique
homes worldwide
smoothly and securely.
- In my redesign, I considered the app’s data-intensive nature, managing user profiles, listings, availability, reviews, and communications. I applied strategic design thinking to streamline key interactions, such as swap inquiries and bookings, while organising complex data into a seamless, user-friendly interface.
- The product redesign focused on building a unified and engaging experience to help increase the number of active members. I looked at ways to build an intuitive booking system, to help facilitate swap proposals between members via quick accept and decline interactions. This led to further refinement to propose new dates in-chat, enabling us to design an accessible and social mechanism.
- Travel is about building meaningful experiences. Throughout, it was my intention to streamline the product journey and connect touchpoints from space creation, availability management to swap bookings efficiently. My goal was to achieve an outcome that provided people with all the tools needed to make swaps securely, while finding delight at the same time.
- I worked with the client to explore other engagement streams through a reward and referral system, which enabled members to earn credits for various task completions. I also redesigned MyMaps to help users add tips for locations worldwide, and integrated TimeOut guides and Spinlister locations to help people learn about the area they’re looking to stay in.
Outcomes & impact
The app 2.0 was released across iOS and Android, launched in 185+ countries and increased monthly active users by +42% since redesign.
Working closely with Engineering and Product, we successfully delivered the app in incremental releases. My redesign of the onboarding, home feed and improved discover experience helped the company reach over 1M+ users within 8 months. This was an inspiring project to be involved in because there was a unique opportunity to drive positive impact for Holiday Swap’s userbase, thus we ended up with a product that had potential to change the way people see travel all over the world.
Post launch, I continued to work with the client on their mid-long term business strategy, and made sure the heart of the vision was focused on driving member engagement, harnessing the power of communities and opening more eyes to the idea of home swapping.
Reflecting back to the scoping and timeframe to deliver from concept to build, I was always critical of product decisions and our design approach, because I wanted to ensure we built conversations that would lead to delivering a meaningful yet significant change, one that can deliver results and create new standards in the sector. The product’s outcome was not only a result of my insistence as a designer, but also working with Holiday Swap to shape the future of travel.
My contributions to Holiday Swap helped them achieve;
Best New Mobile App Winner (The Best Mobile App Awards 2018)
Reached over 1M+ users in 185 countries
Secured a $15M investment round, achieving $400M valuation in 2023
