There is more and more evidence that designing the right experience is key to the success of contemporary brands and companies. And this point was made exceptionally clear two months ago by Joe Gebbia, one of Airbnb’s two founders, in his speech at the TED conference in Vancouver.

If Airbnb has been so hugely successful it’s because – as Joe and his partner Brian Chesky discovered to their own surprise – good design can help people overcome their natural fears and get to trust perfect strangers. That’s actually how Airbnb came to life.

At the beginning, this was not crystal clear. And investors were not able to see how one could persuade people to rent their homes and their most private spaces to guests they knew nothing about. After all, said Joe, “we’ve all been taught, as kids, that strangers equal danger”.

But then design entered the equation, and things started to change. In art school Joe had learned that “design is much more than the look and feel of something – it’s the whole experience”. Was it possible to use design to improve the experience and build trust among people who had never met?

The story of Airbnb proves that you can indeed design for trust. In this case the right design did not only consist of displaying nice apartments at favorable prices: it also involved a well-designed reputation system. People are strongly inclined to host guests or rent houses if they find a positive mix of convincing reviews.

Besides, as Joe noted, there is an additional element. This is a case of sharing economy, in which people engage with each other. What happens between Airbnb’s hosts and guests is not just a transaction – “it’s commerce with the promise of a human connection. People share a part of themselves, and that changes everything”.

The same is true of many other sharing experiences, and I am not only referring to the Uber case. Call it the human factor. In modern countries there is a widespread desire for more meaningful interactions: brands and companies that can offer relevant human experiences (and are able to take full advantage of digital technologies) are set to gain extraordinarily.

This trend of creating new businesses by designing attractive experiences is developing very quickly. So quickly that my friend Alberto Maestri and I decided to write a book on it. The book will be published around the end of the year, but we’d like to build it on a conversation. Thus, we will appreciate your comments.