Hopper Homes
Consumer mobile app | ShippedUX, UI, and content design for a native mobile appMY ROLE
Hopper is a highly popular travel app, known for its affordability. In 2022, they added Vacation Homes to their services, competing with Airbnb, VRBO, HomeAway, and others.
While Hopper Homes was still in its infancy, I was the product designer who worked on its consumer-facing UI. I worked directly with the product manager and engineering team to brainstorm, test, and implement UX/UI improvements. I owned all the UI elements across the Hopper Homes marketplace experience, created user flows and user journeys, led UX research projects, spearheaded prototyping, supported QA testing, and owned the visual design of this vertical to bring experiences to life.
Growing a Vacation Homes Rental Marketplace
During the year I worked at Hopper, our primary goal was to increase Monthly Active Users (MAUs) for Hopper Homes. Our typical user is a young, budget-conscious traveler seeking last-minute deals. We faced competition from various home booking services. My role in the product team involved defining the creative strategy and vision for the app, thinking beyond its visual aspects to what features should be developed.
Constraints
Hopper Homes, less than a year old, was still building its vacation home inventory, particularly in the Miami, Atlanta and Orlando markets. We had resource limitations and had to prioritize projects, address bugs, and work towards our main objective.
Design Solutions
We utilized Hopper's Figma design system for efficiency and visual consistency. My work focused on optimizing the existing Hopper ecosystem for Homes, enhancing UX, and identifying opportunities for UX/UI experimentation. We maintained a data-driven, hypothesis-focused approach and closely monitored metrics in Amplitude. Competitive research was a regular practice, helping inform our UX and UI designs.
Search Funnel Improvements
Our 3-step search funnel was redesigned to align with industry best practices. We also revamped the toolbar users see in search results and reorganized the filter menu based on user research insights.
Promotional Campaigns
For Travel Day Tuesday, we implemented cross-selling carousels and banners across Hopper's ecosystem to drive awareness of Hopper Homes. Users booking flights to Miami were targeted with offers for home bookings, and similar tactics were applied to those searching for hotels. A Homes landing page was launched during this campaign.
Overall UI Improvements
As Hopper Homes expanded its offerings, we made improvements to the marketplace UI to differentiate between entire homes and private rooms. This enhanced search results and the information hierarchy on the listing detail page.
Learnings
Working in a fast-moving, agile product team at Hopper, I've gained insights into rapid concept development, prototype creation, data-driven decision-making, and when to focus on pixel-perfect design. I'm excited about continuing to iterate and enhance the Homes UX and UI as it evolves to meet market demands.