Population
Who is in the number, and who is politely hiding. New users mixed with returning users is the most common sin we see in App Analytics.
The Signal Desk
A public sketch of the method we teach in the studio. It is not a substitute for the six weeks. It is a brief you can steal, annotate, and — if it still feels unfinished — bring back to the house.
Four fields, one page
A Signal Note has four fields and no appendix. If you need an appendix, the claim is not ready. The page is meant to be read aloud in under four minutes, which is longer than most product meetings will give you, and still shorter than a dashboard tour.
Window
When the clock starts and when it stops. “Last 30 days” is not a window; it is a habit. Name the event that starts the clock.
Claim
One sentence. A change, a comparison, or a warning. If it needs a semicolon, split it and throw one half away.
Refusal
Three things you will not say, even if someone asks. This is the field people skip. It is the field that keeps you employed.
A worked refusal
Suppose your install-to-trial rate moved from 4.1% to 5.0% after a store listing rewrite. A costume claim is “the listing is working.” A Signal Desk claim is “among first-time visitors from the United Kingdom on iOS 18 in the two weeks after the screenshot change, trial starts per unique store visitor rose from 4.1% to 5.0%. We will not say the copy caused it; we ran no holdout. We will not extend the claim to Android. We will not treat trial starts as revenue.”
That paragraph is less fun at a stand-up. It is also much harder to walk back in a month.
No vendor lock
UK calendars welcome
Written before charts
How this sits beside the programmes
Reading Product Signal is the supervised version of this page. Retention Cartography spends four weeks on the window and the split. Experiment Hygiene exists because a Signal Note that ignores peeking is a polite fiction. If you only need the brief, take it. If you need someone to sit with your actual events until the refusal list is honest, open the programmes or write to the house.