Hopper’s research process is 2x faster after switching to Maze

Having been ranked as the #1 travel app in 70+ countries, Hopper has helped over 120 million travelers find the best deals on flights, hotels, car rentals, and vacation homes.

As the design team at Hopper grew, their existing research solution was no longer serving their needs. Henrique Johansson Tramontina, Principal Product Designer at Hopper, saw that switching to Maze would enable the team to run UX research more efficiently, conduct moderated interviews, automate data analysis, and share findings more easily. With Maze, they achieved a 50% improvement in research efficiency and a 75% reduction in costs.

Focused on delivering an exceptional customer experience, Hopper’s design team is constantly running tests and surveys to gather customer feedback and inform product decisions. But with the team growing fast, it was clear their existing research solution couldn't scale with their needs.

Every designer at Hopper is responsible for running their own research, so the limited seats on their previous tool soon became a hindrance. Adding more seats would add to the costs of an already expensive solution. For a growing product design team, it was important to ensure that the investment in a research platform would be able to meet the needs of the team as it scaled, and provide access to all designers on a growing team.

The Hopper team also had to deal with tedious, manual processes that were slowing down their UX research process and workflow. “With the previous tool, it was very time-consuming to reach out to customers, set up projects and tests, and especially to analyze the results,” says Henrique. They also needed an affordable way to run moderated studies, which was their biggest pain point.

Henrique’s team considered other UX research tools, but connecting with Maze made the decision easy. “When we started learning about Maze’s features and capabilities, it was a no-brainer to switch,” he says.

The following key factors influenced their decision:

For Henrique, the automated data analysis was a game-changer in terms of research efficiency and time savings. The research process is now 2x faster. “The way Maze generates quantitative data insights is something we hadn’t seen before in another tool,” he says. Maze also makes it possible to gather better data to inform decision-making. For instance, by embedding the Maze prompt on Hopper's travel booking website, they can trigger a survey as a customer moves through the funnel or completes certain actions.

Targeting specific customer segments is now easier thanks to Reach and Maze’s Amplitude integration. Hopper’s previous outreach process was very manual and inefficient, involving coordinating with other teams to produce, track, and send emails, while Maze streamlines all administrative processes.

As a product designer, Henrique values the modern design and intuitive user interface of the Maze platform. “Compared to the previous tool, Maze is really up-to-date with the latest design trends and uses well-established conventions and design patterns, which makes it very easy to use. In contrast, our previous tool seemed like it stopped in time,” he says.

Maze is now being used by designers in cross-functional teams throughout Hopper. According to Henrique, “Maze has significantly improved the efficiency of our research. Creating tests is quick and user-friendly, and we can learn from users and validate ideas before shipping them.”

Analyzing data, generating reports, and sharing insights is also fast and easy with Maze. “Analyzing results used to be a lengthy process with our previous tool, but Maze analyzes and presents data in a way that’s very visual and easy to digest,” says Henrique. It makes the research insights instantly accessible and actionable across the organization.

The speed and efficiency of Maze—from setting up tests to analyzing results—means that Hopper’s design team now works 2x faster. “You can get things done in half the time with Maze,” says Henrique. And with Maze’s transparent pricing structure, he estimates that they’re spending 4x less than with their previous tool.

Most importantly, by enabling more confident and data-driven decision-making, Maze supports and enables Hopper’s customer-centric culture, so they can de-risk product decisions and deliver the best experience to their users. “We can ensure that what we’re proposing is not just a hunch, but is backed up by data, both quantitatively and qualitatively, because we can collect both with Maze,” says Henrique.

Henrique shares how Maze enabled Hopper to gather critical feedback from customers as they launched an MVP. Hopper had been known for only having a mobile app, but released an MVP of their web travel portal along with a Maze study to collect feedback from customers who booked via the portal.

“We had been running the study for about 6 weeks and received over 1.5K responses. Being able to reach this amount of customers and collect such a large number of responses was a huge time saver and it helped us understand potential areas to improve faster.”

By being able to quantify the experience and understand that 87% of customers had no issues with it, Hopper could provide evidence of success in order to confidently move forward. Comparatively, they were able to identify the 13% of customers still facing challenges and this data helped them prioritize areas for improvement. "This has been extremely valuable,” says Henrique.

“The designer found it incredibly easy to set up the test on Maze, and the report was structured in a clear and helpful way that made it intuitive to understand and share the user insights,” says Henrique. The team found the test particularly impactful as they were able to gather in-the-moment feedback from actual customers, as opposed to a random sample of participants in a usability test.

For Henrique, the best part of partnering with Maze is feeling heard and valued as a customer. As a product designer, he particularly appreciates the way Maze stays ahead of design trends and research needs. “Maze is always listening to customer feedback and the platform is constantly evolving,” he says.