Summary
Unlocking the Future: Airbnb’s Redesign and Apple’s Liquid Innovation explores the parallel design evolutions of two industry leaders—Airbnb and Apple—highlighting how each company leverages user-centered innovation to redefine digital experiences. Airbnb’s recent “Unlocking the Future” redesign represents a strategic expansion beyond traditional lodging, positioning the platform as an all-in-one travel app that integrates accommodations, local experiences, and enhanced host services within a streamlined interface. This shift reflects Airbnb’s core value of fostering belonging and inclusivity, supported by extensive user research and data-driven insights that inform iterative improvements to both guest and host interactions.
Concurrently, Apple’s introduction of “Liquid Glass” at the 2025 Worldwide Developers Conference marks a significant advancement in graphical user interface design. Liquid Glass is a dynamic, translucent material that harmonizes hardware and software aesthetics, adapting to device form factors and user environments with fluid visual effects. This innovation extends across Apple’s ecosystem, incorporating updated developer APIs and enabling a cohesive, immersive user experience that builds on decades of design evolution and underscores Apple’s commitment to seamless integration and elegant functionality.
Both redesigns exemplify distinct but complementary approaches to innovation: Airbnb emphasizes practical usability and expanding service breadth through user research and design thinking, while Apple focuses on deep integration of hardware-software collaboration and refined visual language driven by organizational culture and expert-led product development. Together, they illustrate the critical role of design in shaping user engagement and market leadership within the rapidly evolving technology and travel industries.
Despite widespread acclaim, both companies face ongoing challenges. Apple must balance innovation with regulatory scrutiny amid shifting market conditions, while Airbnb strives to maintain its competitive edge through continuous technological and experiential enhancements. These dynamics highlight the complex interplay between design innovation, business strategy, and evolving user expectations that define the future trajectory of both firms.
Background
Airbnb’s recent redesign reflects a deep commitment to user-centered design, emphasizing the company’s core value of making people belong everywhere. This principle has been consistently translated into both their products and company culture, highlighting the centrality of the user experience in their growth marketing strategies. The platform’s significant success is demonstrated by its $110 billion valuation, underscoring investor confidence and the effectiveness of its business model within the shared accommodation space. Over the past two years, Airbnb has adhered to a strategic playbook focused on three main pillars: Making Hosting Mainstream, Perfecting the Core Service, and Expanding Beyond the Core. This approach enables Airbnb to empower hosts, enhance the guest experience, and explore new business opportunities.
Concurrently, Apple has pioneered a meticulously managed design process that seamlessly integrates creativity and functionality to deliver innovative products. Product design engineers are integral throughout all stages, from ideation to refinement, ensuring products not only meet but exceed customer expectations. Apple’s design philosophy, characterized by simplicity, elegance, human-centered design, and innovation, has transformed modern design thinking and set new industry standards. This approach is evident in Apple’s product development process, considered one of the most successful ever implemented, contributing to the company’s valuation exceeding $2 trillion.
Both companies’ design evolutions are visually represented through recent icons, which have been adapted from configurations designed for rectangular displays to fit seamlessly with the rounded corners of modern hardware and app windows. These controls, crafted from what Apple calls Liquid Glass, create a distinct functional layer that harmonizes hardware, software, and content, exemplifying a convergence of aesthetic and usability considerations. Airbnb’s redesign benefited from this elaborated visual synthesis, with deliberate communication efforts underscoring a design thinking posture that prioritizes clarity and engagement with a broad audience, as noted by Airbnb’s Head of User Research, Sasha Lubomirsky.
Airbnb’s “Unlocking the Future” Redesign
In its ongoing effort to transform the user experience, Airbnb unveiled the “Unlocking the Future” redesign, focusing on simplifying navigation and expanding the platform’s capabilities beyond traditional lodging bookings. This comprehensive redesign aims to position Airbnb as an all-in-one travel app that caters to a broader spectrum of user needs, from casual day-to-day services to memorable, expertly guided experiences. Rather than being used solely for occasional vacations, the app is designed to become an integral tool for both frequent travelers and staycationers.
A major feature of the redesign is the introduction of a unified and intuitive interface where users can seamlessly book homes, services, and experiences within a single platform. This includes not only accommodations but also curated local activities led by experts such as historians or fitness trainers, enriching the overall travel experience with personalized, authentic engagements. Airbnb’s commitment to hosting these Experiences in approximately 650 cities worldwide highlights its ambition to expand the breadth and depth of offerings available to guests.
The redesign also enhances host tools, streamlining listing management and enabling hosts to provide a wider array of services. An upgraded messaging system consolidates communications between hosts and guests into a unified platform, improving usability and fostering smoother interactions. These improvements collectively contribute to a more cohesive ecosystem that supports both sides of the Airbnb community.
A key element behind this user-centric redesign is Airbnb’s emphasis on continuous user research and data-driven insights. The company has adopted design thinking methodologies to analyze user behaviors and uncover new opportunities for product enhancement. This approach ensures that the app not only meets but anticipates user needs, enabling iterative refinement and innovation in response to real-world usage patterns.
In addition to visual and functional improvements, the redesign embraces modern hardware design trends by optimizing app controls and navigation for devices with rounded corners and edge-to-edge displays. These controls are crafted from a translucent material referred to as “Liquid Glass,” creating a distinct, layered interface that harmonizes hardware, software, and content to deliver a polished and elegant user experience.
Apple’s Liquid Innovation
Apple’s Liquid Innovation is embodied by the introduction of “Liquid Glass,” a groundbreaking graphical user interface and design language announced at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 9, 2025. This new design paradigm combines the optical qualities of real-world glass with a fluidity uniquely achieved through Apple’s advanced hardware, silicon, and graphics technologies. Rather than simply mimicking physical materials, Liquid Glass is a digital meta-material that dynamically bends, refracts, and shapes light to create an adaptive, translucent interface that responds contextually to the surrounding content and environment.
The Liquid Glass aesthetic builds upon the evolution of Apple’s previous design languages, tracing its lineage from the Aqua interface of Mac OS X, through the real-time Gaussian blurring introduced in iOS 7, to the fluidity of the iPhone X and the immersive UI of visionOS. This progression culminates in an amorphous, glass-like surface that adapts its thickness, shadow depth, and lensing effects depending on the size and function of UI elements, enhancing depth perception and content legibility. The material intelligently shifts color and translucency between light and dark modes to maintain visual harmony across Apple’s ecosystem.
Designed as a unified visual theme across all Apple platforms, Liquid Glass represents more than a stylistic update—it signals Apple’s vision for a cohesive, immersive, and intelligent user experience across devices. By providing updated APIs compatible with SwiftUI, UIKit, and AppKit, Apple empowers developers to seamlessly adopt Liquid Glass materials and controls, encouraging a refreshed app design language that prioritizes intuitiveness and delight in every interaction.
Liquid Glass also extends its influence beyond static UI elements, influencing watchOS 26’s redesign with a similar liquid aesthetic, and integrating AI-driven features like Workout Buddy to enhance user engagement. As Apple continues to refine this design language, Liquid Glass lays the foundation for future innovations in immersive experiences, setting a new standard for fluidity, adaptability, and visual coherence within Apple’s product ecosystem.
Organizational Culture and Leadership Supporting Innovation at Apple
Apple’s organizational culture is a fundamental driver of its sustained innovation and market leadership. Central to this culture is a commitment to top-notch excellence, underpinned by a human resource policy that focuses on hiring only the best talent available in the labor market. This high standard was set by Steve Jobs, who was known for dismissing employees who did not meet his rigorous expectations, a tradition that continues under Tim Cook’s leadership. This approach fosters an environment that promotes, appreciates, and expects outstanding performance from all employees, reinforcing a culture of excellence throughout the company.
Beyond hiring practices, Apple’s success is deeply rooted in its strategic organizational design and visionary leadership. The company places significant trust in its experts, empowering them to drive innovation and maintain a competitive edge. This empowerment reflects a leadership model that prioritizes knowledge, passion, and expertise over traditional hierarchical structures. By doing so, Apple enables its workforce to collaborate effectively, fostering cross-functional teams that integrate diverse skills and perspectives. Product design engineers, for example, play a crucial role not only as individual contributors but as key collaborators who transform ideas into tangible products that exemplify Apple’s commitment to design excellence and superior user experience.
Although less publicly highlighted, Apple’s organizational design and leadership framework have been instrumental in its innovation achievements. The company exemplifies a modern business model that balances entrepreneurial strategy with structured collaboration, enabling rapid innovation cycles and cohesive teamwork. This blueprint demonstrates that successful management in today’s technology sector relies on cultural support, strategic foresight, and the empowerment of experts to lead change and maintain industry leadership.
Collaboration Between Design and Engineering at Apple
At Apple, the collaboration between design and engineering is a cornerstone of the product development process, characterized by a seamless integration of creativity, technical expertise, and cross-functional teamwork. Product design engineers play a vital role in this collaboration, contributing their knowledge and innovation at every stage—from ideation and prototyping to testing and refinement—to ensure that the final products embody both exceptional form and function.
This collaborative process is meticulously managed to maintain a focus on a limited number of key projects, allowing teams to concentrate resources and attention on innovations that promise significant impact. Such prioritization ensures that products receive thorough review and refinement, with executive oversight occurring frequently—often at least once every two weeks—to keep development aligned with Apple’s high standards. The reporting structures are designed to empower design and engineering teams to focus on their core tasks without being burdened by administrative overhead, facilitating direct communication with top executives and fostering swift decision-making.
Throughout development, the iterative nature of design and engineering collaboration is emphasized. Even after manufacturing begins, Apple’s teams continue to build, test, review, and improve products, reflecting a commitment to continuous enhancement and excellence. This iterative loop not only ensures superior product quality but also embodies Apple’s dedication to innovation and user experience.
Moreover, Apple’s engineering and design collaboration extends beyond hardware into software development. For instance, developers using Apple’s SwiftUI, UIKit, and AppKit benefit from updated APIs that align with the company’s design philosophy, such as the integration of Liquid Glass materials and refreshed controls, which enhance the intuitiveness and delightfulness of user interactions. This holistic approach exemplifies Apple’s emphasis on a cohesive user experience, bridging the gap between physical products and digital interfaces.
In essence, the collaborative dynamic at Apple is not merely a process but a strategic framework that unites multidisciplinary teams in pursuit of groundbreaking technology and design excellence, driving the company’s enduring success and innovation leadership.
Comparative Analysis: Airbnb’s Redesign and Apple’s Liquid Innovation
Both Airbnb’s recent app redesign and Apple’s Liquid Glass innovation represent significant strides in user experience and interface design, albeit with distinct approaches and goals tailored to their respective industries. Airbnb’s redesign focuses on simplifying navigation and enhancing usability to elevate the overall guest experience across its global property listings. By revamping the app layout and streamlining menu structures, Airbnb addresses specific user pain points identified through research and feedback, ultimately reinforcing its core value of making “people belong everywhere”.
In contrast, Apple’s Liquid Glass framework is a more foundational UX overhaul introduced at the Worldwide Developers Conference, aiming to harmonize software design with the evolving hardware aesthetics of modern devices. Rather than changing functionality outright, Liquid Glass reimagines controls, toolbars, and navigation elements to fit seamlessly with rounded screen corners, creating a distinct functional layer that enhances visual and interactive coherence without disrupting user familiarity. This innovation exemplifies Apple’s strategic balance between ambition and continuity, providing feature parity at launch while offering potential for future extensibility.
Organizationally, Airbnb’s redesign reflects a user-centric, iterative development process informed by direct user feedback, emphasizing practical improvements and experience-driven design. Apple’s approach, however, is embedded within a tightly integrated product development ecosystem where design engineers collaborate closely with cross-functional teams, enjoying autonomy that allows focus on design excellence without day-to-day operational distractions. This structure fosters innovation that aligns with Apple’s overarching commitment to seamless hardware-software integration.
Impact and Reception
Airbnb’s major redesign, aimed at positioning the company as a warmer and more inclusive brand where people can “belong” anywhere, has drawn significant attention and analysis in the design and branding communities. The transformation included a new logo, redefined positioning, and a refreshed visual identity, all crafted to convey a sense of belonging and human connection. This strategic rebranding has been praised for its ability to translate Airbnb’s core values into its product and overall corporate ethos, as reflected by both internal teams and external observers.
The company’s dedication to user research played a pivotal role in shaping the redesign. Initiatives like the ongoing “Why Hosts Reject” project demonstrate Airbnb’s commitment to deeply understanding user behavior and needs through collaboration between Insights and Analytics teams. This approach not only informed design decisions but also fostered clear and effective communication of research findings across the organization, exemplifying a strong design thinking posture. Such efforts underscore how user insights remain foundational to Airbnb’s product success and innovation.
Similarly, Apple’s introduction of the Liquid Glass design language has been met with enthusiasm for its blend of immersive, intelligent UI and cohesive ecosystem-wide visual identity. The design trend is seen as a glimpse into Apple’s future of seamless device integration and elevated user experiences powered by Apple Silicon. Developers have welcomed the updated APIs and controls that facilitate the adoption of Liquid Glass materials, enabling them to refresh their apps with more intuitive and delightful interactions. This innovation reinforces Apple’s reputation for leading technological and design advancement in personal technology.
Future Prospects and Challenges
Apple and Airbnb both face significant opportunities and challenges as they continue to innovate and refine their offerings. Apple’s recent introduction of the Liquid Glass material exemplifies its commitment to advancing design by blending optical clarity with fluid adaptability, enhancing user interaction across its platforms. This innovation not only refreshes the aesthetic appeal of apps but also provides developers with updated APIs to seamlessly integrate these improvements, potentially setting new standards for user experience in personal technology.
Meanwhile, Airbnb has embraced a new technological framework that supports an expanding range of services, from homes to experiences, aiming to make trip planning as intuitive and enjoyable as the travel itself. Continuous feature enhancements, such as those seen in the 2023 Winter Release, reinforce Airbnb’s dedication to quality and reliability in guest stays, highlighting the platform’s potential for sustained growth and diversification.
However, both companies must navigate distinct challenges. Apple faces increasing regulatory pressures that threaten to reduce revenues critical for funding its research and development efforts. This environment demands a strategic balance between innovation and compliance, as highlighted by experts noting a shift from disruptive breakthroughs to platform refinement and developer enablement to position Apple for future advances. Similarly, Airbnb must continuously evolve its design principles and technology infrastructure to maintain its competitive edge in an increasingly complex market landscape, ensuring that empathy-driven innovation continues to improve user experiences and service quality.
The content is provided by Harper Eastwood, The Daily Pulse