How Compose Enables Airbnb to Create Better Hosting and Hosting Experiences
Since 2007, Airbnb has grown to connect more than 4 million hosts with more than 1 billion guests worldwide. One of the reasons behind the application’s success is that its developers strive to achieve engineering excellence by focusing on two main principles: the use of technology that stimulates innovative development and the empowerment of the engineers behind the work.
Jetpack Compose, Android’s modern UI building toolkit, directly supports both of Airbnb’s development principles. Compose provided a solid foundation for customizable, quality engineering and reduced boilerplate code, allowing developers to focus on delivering a great user experience – and furthering their dual pursuit of engineering excellence.
Airbnb began testing Compose in 2020 when it was in developer preview. As an early contractor, the Airbnb team was eager to take advantage of the various new features and simplify their workflow. Now, having gained confidence by using Compose in production, Airbnb engineers are still pleased with how it has improved their development process.
To equip engineers for success
Compose’s deterministic testing helped ensure that Airbnb’s engineers strictly controlled the UI tests they performed and eliminated general flatness, thus building their confidence in the quality of each part of their application and the user experiences they create. , reinforced. Engineers can now also use Compose to test animations they previously could not.
Similarly, Airbnb developers used Compose to add automated screenshot tests to their code base. Because they do not have to write the code for screenshot testing, engineers could use it directly to detect errors and regressions. This gave them more time to review and guarantee feature functionality and UI appearance across a variety of devices.
Compose is great to use with Views. This interoperability made it easy for Airbnb engineers to board and test the new UI toolkit at their own pace, allowing them to experience the benefits of Compose without migrating the entire features.
These engineering improvements gave them the solid technical foundations they needed to serve users in fresh and improved ways.
Engineering efficiency improves user experiences
Airbnb keeps hosts and guests at the heart of their decisions. The engineering team was excited to adopt Compose when they learned how it would enable them to manufacture UI more easily and efficiently, leading to better experiences for their end users.
Because Compose made Airbnb’s features require significantly less code to write and manage, the Airbnb team increased their efficiency. All of this meant that the team was able to focus its energy on performing the complex tasks involved in developing the innovative features that could best serve users.
Because their features now require less code, the Airbnb team will be able to slow down the growth of their application size in the long run. Providing a smaller application is important to Airbnb as an organization with users around the world that apparently ensures that all hosts and guests can easily download and access their application – especially those with older devices or logging in from countries with high data costs .
Using Compose’s engineering improvements, the Airbnb team was able to put user needs first.
Improve developer productivity with Compose
Compile simplified UI development to give Airbnb engineers the freedom to focus on more dynamic and innovative features that benefit the program’s hosts and guests.
Learn how to improve your team’s productivity with Jetpack Compose.