Alumni
What people said after they had to defend a map.
These notes refer to programmes on this site. We keep a mild reservation in the mix because a studio that only publishes applause is not a studio you should trust with a live product.
The forbidden-metrics list from Cohort Cartography is still taped next to our incident channel. We stopped using “average session” in exec reviews after module four. I wish the SQL labs assumed less familiarity with window functions — I burned a weekend catching up.
★★★★☆
Activation Windows did what it promised for our first 72 hours. The faculty refused to bless our “aha moment” because it was a paywall view. That was irritating and correct.
Came for the lifecycle charter reviews. Our privacy lead in London actually used the limitation memo during a vendor questionnaire. The quarterly cadence is tight if your release train slips.
Tom from Cardiff here. The day-2 to day-5 essay in the journal described our fitness app uncomfortably well. The lab then made us split “opened the app” from “completed a workout with heart-rate”. We still argue, but we argue about the same picture.
Case file: a subscription audio app redraws week one
A twelve-person content app based in the Midlands joined Retention Studio with a proud day-1 number driven by an autoplay trailer. Faculty asked them to define a window that required a second intentional play in 96 hours. The day-1 figure fell. What rose was a smaller group whose month-2 paid renewal was actually readable.
They did not “fix retention” in eleven weeks. They stopped celebrating a trailer loop. The oral defence spent most of its time on users who listen on a partner’s smart speaker, where events never arrive. That limitation is now in their board appendix.
Case file: a fintech onboarding that looked finished
A GB neobank product pair brought Activation Windows after a redesign. KYC completion was high; second-week money movement was not. The workbook made them treat KYC as a legal gate, not an activation. The interesting window became “first outbound payment that was not a test to themselves”.
One analyst left the short course early; the remaining PM finished the marked map and later joined Cohort Cartography. We include that because completion is not automatic, and the studio does not chase people who decide the work is not the job they wanted.