Studies / Usage study
Flagship study
Cloud Sync Usage Study
A three-to-five-week study of how people actually move notes between a phone, a laptop, and whatever they still keep on paper when they do not trust the second copy.
This is the study we recommend when a note-taking app team keeps hearing the same complaint — “it was on my phone last night” — and does not yet know whether people are waiting, retrying, photographing, or abandoning the notebook.
Who it is for
Product leads, independent developers, and small publishing teams who ship a note-taking app or a notes feature inside a larger product. You must be able to introduce us to six to twelve people who already write in it most weeks. We do not recruit strangers off the street for this work; the behaviour only makes sense inside a notebook someone already trusts, or is trying to trust.
What you receive
A written findings report in English (a Bahasa Malaysia summary can be arranged), a map of the sync states people actually noticed, annotated session moments, and a ninety-minute readout. The report names behaviours in the writers’ own words. It does not include a backlog of engineering tickets unless you ask us, in the briefing, to translate a behaviour into a question your builders can argue with.
What is included
- An opening briefing on how sync is supposed to work in your app, including the states you believe people see.
- Help agreeing a participant profile: whose notebooks, which devices, which languages.
- Eight to twelve remote or in-person sessions. In-person work is offered in Negeri Sembilan and the Klang Valley; other Malaysian cities are travel by arrangement.
- Consented review of sync-related event logs if you already collect them. We do not install a tracker for you.
- A synthesis week and the readout.
What is excluded
We do not write code, redesign screens, run advertisements, host telemetry, or keep copies of note bodies. If a participant pastes a private paragraph into the session, Priya’s protocol requires we redact it from recordings and from the report.
Who does the work
Aisha Rahman leads the sessions. Lim Wei Jun reads logs against those sessions when logs exist. Priya Menon holds consent and scheduling from the Senawang office. You meet the same three people at the readout; we do not hand the study to a rotating bench.
Process and duration
- Briefing: you walk us through a working build and the sync behaviour that keeps surfacing.
- Profile: we agree who we will sit with, and in which language.
- Sessions: each person opens the notebook on at least two devices, or explains why they will not.
- Log reading, only with a signed protocol and no note bodies.
- Synthesis and a written report.
- Readout, usually ninety minutes by video or in Senawang.
Most studies close in four weeks from the briefing. A fifth week appears when recruitment is slow or when sessions must wait for a school holiday in Negeri Sembilan.
Place and preparation
Sessions run by video or in person. The report arrives as a PDF and a conversation. Please bring a working build, a one-page description of how a note is meant to travel, and the names of any sync events you already record. Do not send us a production dump of private notes.
Constraints
We will not read the content of private notes without explicit participant consent and a written protocol. We do not store note bodies. If your legal team cannot accept that boundary, we will decline the study rather than pretend a workaround.
Price and next step
From RM 12,800. Travel outside Negeri Sembilan and the Klang Valley is billed separately. The figure moves with the number of sessions, whether logs already exist, and whether interviews run in both English and Bahasa Malaysia. Rates and estimate factors sit on their own page.
Write through the contact form naming the app and the sync problem you keep hearing about. We reply within three working days.
Questions we hear before a briefing
Do you need access to production?
No. A build the participants already use is enough. Logs are optional and only useful when they can be tied to a session without exposing note text.
Can you study a notes feature inside another product?
Yes, if people treat that feature as a notebook — they return to it to write, not only to dump a screenshot. If notes are a forgotten side drawer, say so in the briefing; we may recommend a shorter brief instead.
Will you tell us what to build?
We will tell you what people did while a note was travelling. Deciding what to build remains yours. Teams who want a sentence rewritten, not a four-week study, should look at the language review.