ABOUT
HYPOTHESIS #1
Low click rates might actually indicate cards are already doing their job.
The headline and recommendation may deliver enough value on their own, the drawer exists mainly for people who want the proof behind it. If click-through itself needed to be the success metric, the card would need to show less up front and require the click to unlock the full recommendation.
HYPOTHESIS #2
Low engagement with the thumbs up/down warrants direct user interviews, not just more data-watching.
Feedback timing may be part of it: cards regenerate weekly, so by the time a recommendation proves right or wrong, the card that prompted it is often already gone. Worth understanding when and why users actually would rate a card.
HYPOTHESIS #3
The card doesn't clearly signal it's clickable
While the card has a hover state, that alone isn't enough of a cue. A "View details" affordance on hover could make the interaction more obvious.
HYPOTHESIS #4
The moment someone forms a real opinion on a recommendation may happen inside the drawer, not on the card.
Duplicating the thumbs up/down there could catch feedback that never gets given on the compact view.
HYPOTHESIS #5
Card clicks and thumbs ratings might not be the right signal for real-world impact at all.
A better measure could be following up directly. A smart check-in system triggered by engagement, a click, a thumbs rating, any signal of interest, could prompt a follow-up a week later asking if they acted on it. It's also worth revisiting the action-button idea we passed on during testing: if we built it, clicking it could double as a signal that someone was ready to act.
Underneath most of these hypotheses is a bigger question, whether clicks and thumbs were ever the right thing to watch. Talking it through with our PM afterward, the real goal was never engagement for its own sake. It was giving people recommendations that move a metric they actually care about, something like ROAS. Clicks and feedback were a proxy for that, a way to check the model was landing before we could measure the real outcome. If the recommendations are useful enough that people just act on them without clicking through or rating them, that's not necessarily a failure. It might be the feature working the way it was supposed to.
At this point, I was fueled by genuine curiosity, eager to follow up with customers and dig into their experience with the cards. Before I could, Freshpaint was hit with a wave of layoffs, and unfortunately I was affected by it. I still think about how this one plays out, and I'd love the chance to find out.