NordVPN adoption diary study

We know a lot about what happens after someone buys NordVPN. We can see which apps get installed, which features get switched on, and where people usually stop. What we couldn’t see was the thinking behind any of it.

This study set out to fill that gap. We wanted to understand how new subscribers form habits, what they think they bought, how they find their way around the product, and what makes them give up on a feature — in their own words, as it’s happening.

A single interview only gives you memories, and memories are already tidied up. People forget the small moments of confusion, and they rarely notice their own habits forming. Product data has the opposite problem: it shows exactly when someone stopped or started using a feature, but never why.

So we designed something slower. We recruited 13 people who had just subscribed to NordVPN and stayed with them for six weeks. It started with a kickoff interview in their first days with the product. Then the participants logged their experiences as they happened, sending us short messages whenever they touched anything with our name on it: the app, emails, notifications, support, the website. We checked in halfway through and closed with an in-depth interview at the end.

The rule we set for ourselves was to stay out of the way. No tasks, no homework, no nudging people towards features. If someone never interacted with a part of the product, then that was the finding.

Diary studies live or die on whether participants keep writing. Ours ran through the messaging apps participants already used every day, so logging felt like texting rather than filling out a form.

The texting did one job — the interviews did another. The interviews showed us the thinking behind the logs: what people expected, what had changed since last time, and why. The logs kept the interviews honest, and the interviews gave the logs meaning.

That informality improved the quality of what we got back. Participants told us when they were annoyed, when they had given up on something, and when they had no idea what a feature was for. A few sent screenshots at midnight. Some weeks we heard nothing at all — which was information too.

The obvious deliverable was a report. A more useful deliverable was material the team can keep returning to: the full set of transcripts and chat logs, a synthesis file, and an individual journey map for each participant.

The study started to change how we talk about adoption internally. Instead of one number per feature, we now describe what has to be true for someone to adopt the feature — awareness, understanding, a moment of noticed value, and attribution to the right part of the product.

The study reframed adoption from a feature problem into an ecosystem problem. Product experience, communication, and touchpoints each carry part of the load, and what people take away depends on how well those parts add up — not on how good any single part is. The clearest opportunity is guidance that works across touchpoints, matches the reason someone bought in the first place, and arrives at the moment it’s relevant.

This was our first diary study as a team, so the next one will be sharper: a tighter focus, more automation in how we handle the data, and better planning and execution throughout. We’re also considering making it a habit rather than a one-off — a continuous discovery setup where a small group stays in conversation with us as the product changes.