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Daily active users on a messaging app dropped 10% week over week. How would you investigate?

How to approach it

Before guessing causes, check whether the drop is real: data pipeline, definition changes, and seasonality.

How a strong answer opens

“Before I look for causes, I want to know the drop is real. Has anything changed in logging or in how we define a daily user, and how big is a normal weekly swing?”

Outline of a strong answer

Try answering out loud for a few minutes before you open this.

  1. Confirm the data: logging changes, dashboard bugs, definition changes
  2. Check timing: sudden or gradual, holiday or event
  3. Segment: platform, country, app version, new versus existing users
  4. Look at internal causes: releases, outages, notification changes
  5. Look at external causes: competitor launch, app store issues, news
  6. Form a hypothesis, test it, and propose a fix with an owner

Where this question usually goes wrong

Brainstorming twenty causes before checking the data, the timing and where the drop is concentrated.

Learn the method

Diagnosing a metric drop in Module 2, Metrics and execution.

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