Maze.

Where Maze fits on a long engagement.

Unmoderated testing answers questions of the form "can people complete this", quickly and with enough participants to be worth something. It is far cheaper than scheduling sessions and gives a quantitative answer where a designer would otherwise be arguing from taste.

It cannot tell you why. When a task fails, the recording shows where and not the reasoning, which is where a handful of moderated sessions earns its place. Using one to replace the other is the common mistake in both directions.

What an assigned team does with Maze.

Unmoderated testing is most useful as a habit rather than an event. Run before a launch it produces findings arriving too late to act on; run continuously it changes what gets built, because the evidence lands while decisions are still open.

Establishing that cadence takes somebody whose job it is, which is why research capacity is normally assigned alongside design under outsourced design team rather than commissioned per study.

What we use Maze for.

• Validating a flow before it is built Testing a prototype with enough people to catch the problem that would otherwise ship.
• Comparing two directions Task success measured across alternatives, so the decision is not settled by seniority.
• Finding where people hesitate Drop-off within a flow located precisely, which narrows what to investigate properly.

How Maze capacity is assigned.

Research capacity is assigned under outsource UX design, and on an ongoing roadmap research and design usually sit on the same agreement. The four steps from brief to first sprint are described in four steps.