Community Homestay Network

overview

The Community Homestay Network (CHN) is a hospitality initiative in Nepal designed to introduce travelers to the charm of traditional cultural experiences. By partnering with remote villages, CHN provides tourists with the opportunity to stay in local homes, immersing themselves in the authentic lifestyle and traditions of Nepalese communities. These homestay experiences allow visitors to live alongside locals, participating in everyday activities and exploring the rich cultural heritage of the region. At the same time, this approach supports sustainable tourism by directly benefiting the local economy and empowering rural communities.

team

UI/UX Developer

Naman Subedi

CEO @SquareBx

Pranay Shrestha

COO @ SquareBx

Manoj Malakar

problem_breakdown

what’s the problem?

The team at CHN approached us with their biggest problem, they had an outdated website and the website itself was the main touchpoint for them with most of their customers. They felt that the dated design of the website was not properly representing their offering and were losing customers then and there.

market_research

Figure out what the market leaders are doing right. We looked into Airbnb, Hipcamp and FeatherDown. Each of them are doing things right outside of their business model and we wanted to try and capture things that are replicable to CHN.

airbnb

They sort of pioneered renting out your home for cash and CHN is basically that but for homestays in Nepal. Moreover Airbnb is a very well known design forward company so we spent a lot of time documenting user flows in Airbnb knowing there was a lot of science behind their decision making.

What we learned:

• Map view is quintessential for users who are just browsing. You do not want to give users a list of options in a bland website, they almost always opt for the map view.
• The booking flow is seamless for them. We want to hog the user’s attention when they browse through the homestay details.

hipcamp

Hipcamp promotes what they call “glamping”. it is a new industry term merging glamorous and camping, meaning camping in the backwoods but you get to shower and have wifi access and all.

What we learned:

• Make connected products visible. For a camp site, there maybe 100’s of camping locations for a user to choose in hipcamp. they handle this very seamlessly and it connects directly to our activities tab.
• Boast about your partners. Hipcamp partners with Recreate Responsibly and Leave no Trace, which are movements which promote sustainable travel. They act as an extra touchpoint for potential customers and as a hammer for exsisting customers that they are a part of a social cause.

feather_down

A lesser known website, featherdown is a uk based farm staycation type website. Basically glamping but you live in a farm and watch the farmhands work.

What we learned:

• Hammer home your unique product. Featherdown know they have really high quality farm stay options, and the users know this as soon as they hit the landing page.
• Have your own identity. This is an issue with a lot of hospitality sites where they all end up looking the same. Featherdown has a unique look and feel and their digital assets are very specific to their niche. Having this level of customization lends itself to making the guests know that they aren’t in a generic website aimed at the masses, that they have found a gem to be cherished, a vacation for the books.

ethnographic_testing

We wanted to take a look and the current website, what it does well and what it does badly. This allows us to work on specific areas in the new design, plus have a benchmark to compare the new design to.

We brought out 10 participants close to the user persona of our target audience.

We sat down with each of the participants and gave them a set of 3 tasks:

1. Find a specific homestay: we want users with a specific location in mind to be able to find them.
2. Book the said homestay: we want the booking process to be as seamless as possible.
3. Find the impact page: CHN felt what set them apart was the impact they had in the local communities.

We then noted down their narrations are they went through the websites. There were patterns instantly recognized. Here are the top issues the users faced:

• The search space is too narrow. We provided prompts like “homestay near Pokhara” or “homestay in Kathmandu valley”, most of them went straight to the search bar and entered keywords but it didn’t return any results. the search bar acted more like a dropdown selection, where the user narrowed the dropdown items by entering the name of the homestay which often times did not include location.
• Users felt that the homepage was not descriptive enough to immediately know what the website was about.
• Users tried to search using map, which was a missing feature in the old website. For people who are knowledgeable about Nepal’s geography want to search using map, but it was not available.
• While booking, Their user journey flow was archaic, leading their customers to have to contact the team through a contact form before any reservations can be made. This violates every rule of conversion where we want to make it as easy as possible for users to buy.
• Users looked for information on how to get to a remote community where the homestay was located. This information was missing as well.
• How the funds were distributed between CHN and the local communities was not clear, which wouldn't be an issue but as CHN is banking on being a sustainable tourism alternative that supports local communities, this information was missing in the impact section.

wireframe_/_signoff

Before we jump into the new UX design, we wanted to get sign off from the clients about what our vision for the website would be. We used low fidelity wireframes to ensure the whole team was on the same page before we start working on in-depth design ideas. We put forward our findings to the clients and talked in a abstract level what our solution for each point would be. Some of the changes would require changes to their business logic, especially booking and inquiries, so we started talks about it in the first meeting itself.

I grinded through the wireframes for the integral pages, iterated rapidly through them and bouncing ideas with our dev team. After a week or so of daily meetings and wireframing, we had a solution in hand that all parties were satisfied in, so we were off to high fidelity prototyping.

Our solution to each of the issues we found in the ethnographic testing were:

• Search: Perform a full text search through the most important fields like title, location, description, highlights and return the results to the users.
• Homepage: focus on traditional experience.
• Map: Add a map view for seamless selection experience.
• Booking: Follow Airbnb like flow where users can input CC info and book directly without email back and forth.
• Location: Add a “how to get here” section to every homestay page.
• Impact: Use informative graphics to explain flow of funds.

prototyping

After getting signoffs on all of our wireframes and solutions to most issues plaguing the old website, I started working on high fidelity for the new website. The overall theme was chosen by the team at CHN including colors and fonts so I started work using those aspects.

We had weekly check in meetings with the team over at CHN to keep them up to date with the progress we were making. The prototypes also helped them visualize what the final website would look like.

final_results

As we started the handoff stage, I unfortunately had to leave the team as I was moving. Some changes were made to the project after I had left, but the spirit of the project was not modified.

The project was jam packed with a lot of fun work done in less than 6 months, and I am proud of what I was able to achieve as a solo UX person in the project. If I had to summarize my experience, the two words would be growth and insight. I was new to the hospitality game, so throughout our audits and design sessions I was able to grow into a designer with a more complete picture of the industry. Also because I was new to the industry, I was able to bring valuable insight into how our users may feel, and I believe me being able to empathize with our users for real brought a level of finish to our project that would've been missed otherwise.

a_quick_tip: Ask a lot of questions to a lot of people around you while you work. Ask them if they like the design, ask them to use the prototype and make notes. Rather than waiting for the work to be completed and make changes at the end, getting feedback and iterating will help you avoid pitfalls that are expensive to dig yourself out of later on. Do not make decisions based on what people think the solution is, make decisions based on what they figure out the problem is. Most people are good at finding blockers, not solving them.