Your product has grown. So has the friction
Growth adds users, markets and features, and the friction adds up. How to find where users get stuck and fix what matters, using evidence, not guesses.
Growth is good news, and it has a cost. More users, more markets and more features bring more ways to get stuck. Sign-up takes longer than it should, support tickets repeat the same questions, and people churn before they reach the part of the product that’s actually good.
Friction rarely comes from one big mistake. It builds up in the parts of the product that don’t make headlines.
Where friction usually hides
- Sign-up and authentication
- Account settings, privacy and account deletion
- Rules users have to follow but don’t understand
- Flows designed for your first users that never changed as you grew
An example: TIER across 11 cities
At TIER I was the first UX researcher. Over 3 months I ran a qualitative research mission across 11 European cities to understand how riders, cities and operations teams experienced the product in the real world. 55 sessions, with weekly insights going straight into product decisions.
I also led discovery and delivery for core features that don’t make headlines but fix conversion, reduce support tickets and stop users from churning before their second ride:
- After-ride photo capture shipped in 4 weeks, and parking behaviour improved immediately.
- Single sign-on with Google and Apple cut sign-up friction.
- Account management shipped as a full suite: privacy settings, account deletion and a better sign-up experience.
We also built a habit of prioritizing features with Amplitude metrics, not opinions.
Sometimes the fix is removing things
Not all friction gets fixed by improving a flow. At Carré, getting ready for a seed round meant removing 60% of the product.
How I approach friction
- Start from evidence. Analytics show where people drop off. Talking to users shows why.
- Fix the unglamorous parts first. Sign-up, settings and rules often matter more than the next big feature.
- Ship, measure, repeat. Small improvements that ship beat a redesign that doesn’t.
Questions founders ask
Do we need user research first?
Enough to stop guessing. At TIER that meant 55 sessions across 11 cities. For an early-stage product, a few conversations with the right users is often where it starts.
Is this a redesign?
Not necessarily. A lot of friction can be fixed in the flows you already have. When it can’t, removing features is often more useful than redesigning them.