Cliff Kuang wrote an interesting article about design at Airbnb called How Airbnb Evolved To Focus On Social Rather Than Searches:

For a couple years, registered Airbnb users have been able to star the properties they browse, and save them to a list. But Gebbia’s team wondered whether just a few tweaks here and there could change engagement, so they changed that star to a heart. To their surprise, engagement went up by a whopping 30%. The star, they realized, was a generic web shorthand and a utilitarian symbol that didn’t carry much weight. The heart, by contrast, was aspirational.

Cliff goes further to explain how Airbnb followed the data clues to understand exactly why the heart performed better, and then used those insights to make some very successful design changes. The data is there, we just have to measure, listen, and respond.

(link via @iamFinch)