Your POV for today: Airbnb just hired you to rethink the UX design for their navigation. Would you change anything about the primary set of filters (“the what, where and who”)? Or what about their secondary set of filters, specific to what you might get at a specific stay? Let’s break it down.
Welcome back to UX Challenge $27 on the UX psychology behind everyday brands. I’m Samaya, your UX Woman and I help you land six-figure UX jobs, sharing my experiences working with brands like Disney+, Hulu, Marvel, Vanguard, and more.
Airbnb splits their navigation into primary and secondary sets of filters using progressive disclosure. This is a design pattern where UX designers gradually display and reveal more information as they user needs it while they work through a flow.It helps users not become overwhelmed with too many options at once.
Airbnb does a great job of allowing users to browse through stays without needing to click on them by providing just the right amount of imagery and stay context.
This is much better than navigation patterns you might see on Marriott’s website here, where not as much info is revealed on the browsing page, pushing the user to click into one option at a time…
Or check out Zillow’s website here, again where we can select all filters needed at once, the opposite of Airbnb’s progressive disclosure approach.
My question is- can we reveal even more information on Airbnb’s browsing page to help users make better decisions when clicking into one specific stay? What if we highlighted specific in-home features like Wifi, Air Conditioning, and Pets Allowed directly on the tile displays instead? Would that work?
I’ve taught live UX courses for over 5 years and love it when my students land UX jobs and interviews with brands like Reddit, CVS, Nike, Google, GE, Capital One and more.
So my question to you is: what are you going to do TODAY if you want to be hired at a travel company like Airbnb in the new year? Let’s break it down!
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to building a UX portfolio that will attract the relevant hiring managers. You will have to create a curated UX resume, LinkedIn profile, and UX portfolio with relevant UX skillsets and industry expertise.
So how do you start to curate the right UX portfolio to get hired at a brand like Airbnb?
Get clear on 1-2 specific UX career paths you would like to showcase expertise in. Do NOT pursue 3 or 4 or 5 different career paths all at once! This will just confuse any recruiter or hiring manager looking at your profile. You can take our 2-minute personality quiz on what UX career path best suits you here.
Get clear on what transferable skillsets and industry expertise you bring from past careers or educational experience. For folks who have 2-10 years of experience in another career path like education, healthcare, graphic design, or business strategy, it might be possible to rebrand as a mid-senior level UX researcher or UX designer, if you take the time to describe your transferable skillsets as service design. Of course, you will also have to address certain knowledge gaps!
Get clear on what your knowledge gaps are that are blocking you from landing your dream UX role. Get focused on very specific knowledge gaps you will need to address if you want to pivot into a UX research or UX design career path.
Plan your UX career for 2027 by working through our interactive 2026 UX Career Planning workshop in FigJam. The exercises will help you gain clarity, focus and specificity, helping you define and build a very specific UX portfolio suited to what YOU want. You can also work through our 2026 UX Design Hackathon to plan your UX portfolio once you have gained some clarity.
Once you feel ready to build 3-5 UX case studies within a very specific, focused UX portfolio that aligns with your past career, service design, and your future direction, I would recommend booking a 20-minute UX strategy call with me to see if UX Woman can help you get to where you want to be!
During our 20-minute strategy call, we love to validate your UX portfolio plan and get to know about your past experiences, as well as your future vision. If we both feel like we are a good fit for working with each other, we can talk about next steps like registering for the Fall 2026 cohort of the 7-Month Live UX Design Accelerator by paying the $490 registration fee.
Once registered for the Fall 2026 cohort, which begins on Sunday, September 20th from 3pm - 6pm ET, I will send you all the onboarding materials for the Live UX course. This will include calendar invites to each class, a tuition payment plan and options, the student syllabus, and an onboarding call before class starts where we finalize your UX Woman project topic.
As always, rooting for your success!
Samaya, your UX Woman
P.S. You can also subscribe to our advanced UX topics Substack to get access to our VIP entry-level UX jobs board, VIP remote UX jobs board, our Power without Permission playbook for women in UX & tech, our 90-day UX job search playbook, and our Delusional by Design playbook on creativity as a UX career changer.
No posts
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.