Users kept choosing the “wrong” feature, so I rebuilt around it
I built an app for people to swipe on topics, match with someone who disagrees, and get scored on civility.
The idea was that if you were constantly an asshole, your civility score would follow you.
But I added a side feature called toxic mode where there was no civility score and people could just argue.
Every user went straight to toxic mode.
That taught me two things.
First, users do not always care about the product you think you built. They care about the part that creates the strongest reaction.
Second, my funnel was way too long for something that needed two people online at the same time. Ad to site to app store to install to onboarding to swiping to matching to finally chatting was just way too much friction.
So I was like ok lets just see if the friction is the issue here
I made a lightweight browser version focused on the behavior people were already choosing.
No install. No app store. Just pick a topic and jump in.
https://thinklavender.com/ragebait
The bigger lesson for me was to watch what users actually do, especially when it is not what you wanted them to do.
Curious if other founders here have had users prefer the “wrong” feature and whether you followed it or kept pushing your original vision.