Ground Research in Real Behavior

Company Context

HabitFlow is a Series B mobile productivity app with 6M monthly active users and a freemium subscription model. It competes on simplicity and habit-building workflows, but recent feature launches have underperformed because teams relied heavily on interview feedback and internal assumptions rather than observed user behavior.

Problem

Over the last two quarters, HabitFlow launched three research-backed features, but only one achieved meaningful adoption. A postmortem showed a recurring pattern: users said they wanted more customization and planning tools, yet product analytics showed most users completed tasks through quick-add, recurring reminders, and simple streak views. Leadership now wants a repeatable research approach that keeps discovery grounded in what users actually do, not just what they say.

The Head of Product asks you to design a research and decision-making process for a new initiative aimed at improving 8-week retention for new users, currently 24%, with a target of 30% within two quarters.

Deliverables

1. Define how you would structure user research so it reflects real user behavior rather than assumptions.
2. Identify which user segments and behaviors you would prioritize for this retention problem.
3. Explain how you would combine qualitative and quantitative inputs to make product decisions.
4. Recommend what type of feature or product changes you would test first, and why.
5. Define how you would know whether the research process itself is improving decision quality.

Constraints

• MVP recommendations must be testable within 10 weeks.
• Research team has 1 UX researcher, 1 data analyst, and 2 PMs.
• Event instrumentation is incomplete for some onboarding flows.
• Engineering can support only one medium-sized retention initiative this quarter.
• Leadership wants evidence before approving broader platform changes.