Airbnb Logo Redesign Survey: More People See Hearts Than Naughty Parts | Hacker News Reader

Airbnb Logo Redesign Survey: More People See Hearts Than Naughty Parts

survata.com

34 pointsckelly25 comments

What about "Automation Anywhere's logo (https://www.automationanywhere.com/ )"

Edit: fixed url

Yeah, this uncanny similarity is more disconcerting than the "lady parts" people see.

There needs to be an easy way to search for existing logos by image similarity... the USPTO has an extensive categorisation method for trademarks ( http://tess2.uspto.gov/tmdb/dscm/index.htm ) but what's really needed is something more visual. Using Google on a greyscale version of Airbnb's logo didn't yield anything geometrically similar.

There is; it's called a trademark search, and it's a matter of public record: "The trademark examining attorney has searched the Office’s database of registered and pending marks and has found no conflicting marks that would bar registration..." (http://tsdr.uspto.gov/documentviewer?caseId=sn86160387&docId...) ~The USPTO's response to this Jan 8, 2014 filing: http://tsdr.uspto.gov/documentviewer?caseId=sn86160387&docId...

Looks like a possible add-on feature for http://www.brandsoftheworld.com/

When I look at the clean logo used in the survey, I think more paperclip or 'A'. When this was announced on their blog, however, a hand-drawn image was displayed prominently -- an image which looks significantly more like a "butt" than the rendered version.

Referenced image: http://i.imgur.com/XwKTmgq.png

The blog post fails to mention the sample size, which according to the downloaded data, is 164 respondants. Additionally, only 34 respondents (20%) actually said heart (the most popular word in the dataset), so there's a lot of variation in interpretation.

Hi Max, Survata co-founder here. 164 respondents is actually a fine sample size for a quick read on qualitative feedback. Even if this had been a quantitative study, that would represent a 7.7% margin of error at a 95% confidence level. Counter-intuitively, you don't always need thousands of respondents to measure an audience's behavior!

The calculation (1.96 / 2) / sqrt(164) for the margin of error isn't applicable in this case because it's not a Bernoulli pass/fail event, and is instead an open-ended question.

If you framed the question as "Do you think this is a sex object? Yes/No" then the margin of error might be more applicable. I count 10/164 (6%) who did: stating that 94% of people don't think AirBNB's logo is a sex object is a much better lede.

I count 17 that classified it as a sex object. Its worth noting that this survey was sampled after it was released to the public and a controversy had already stirred.

I was impressed that one respondent said "ouija board planchette".

The open ended nature of "what do you see" is totally questionable. The 'do you think this is a sex object' is a much better way to ask that question as even though its leading, its also the kind of thing you cant 'unsee'. "Does this look like balls?" It does now that you mention it, yes.

Correct. I had tried to clarify the margin of error calculation wasn't relevant here by saying "Even if this had been a quantitative study"...sorry if that wasn't clear.

One issue to keep in mind is that while people might initially not see the naughty interpretation, there's oftentimes a "cannot unsee" effect with these kinds of things. Happened with a company I used to work at with their logo redesign.

One might imagine naughty parts from just about any logo.

The Y Combinator logo looks like cleavage to me.

Actually, it's more like a lady's inner thighs... (y) ;-)

wait. what are you implying it is then?

I see what looks like a place marker embedded in the letter A, which makes perfect sense for Airbnb. Maybe that's what they were intending?

...and after staring at the logo for a few more minutes, I still can't see any more resemblance to genitalia than the letter A.

I created a quick, interactive visualization of the survey data here: https://www.machete.io/board/view/airbnb_logo_by_survata/50f...

You can spot some interesting (but probably not surprising) insights like there were one and half times as many women who responded as men (96 to 68), but there were twice as many men as women who saw something "sexual" (11 to 6).

You can play around with it and see if you spot any other interesting tidbits.

Haters gonna hate.

Yesterday I read an article about AirBnB from someone that had clearly gone off the rails. Taking less issue with the boobs/balls/vag image in the logo, she started off by ranting about how insensitive the white-male founders were for using the slogan "belong anywhere" because one way people “belonged” to other people was through chattel slavery. Another was through marriages that made women the property of their husbands. Seriously?

People claiming they see vagina or butt in that picture remind me of the tools claiming they'd always think of tampons or periods when apple named the ipad [1].

[1] http://www.fastcompany.com/1528988/apples-ipad-name-not-firs...

Funny thing is that the heart symbol actually was naughty parts originally... ;-) http://www.cracked.com/article_19909_6-famous-symbols-that-d...

Deleted comment

Google Image Search is your friend! http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/general/others/hosting-a-...

It looked like a bent paper clip airplane, I can't see the genitalia at all.

this looks like it was designed with a spirograph back in 1970. also, it looks like kim kardashian's ass, or a paperclip

So... this material is legit, but the Malaysian crash discussions I kept trying to read earlier today were flagged into oblivion. Got it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com