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Survivorship bias 0:50
A 50-second explainer of Survivorship bias, narrated over the same demo you can try yourself.
Try the interactive Survivorship bias demo
What this video covers
Survivorship bias is drawing conclusions from only the things that made it through, while the ones that didn't - and the lessons they hold - are invisible. In UX it's the trap of studying only the users who stayed: your analytics, reviews and surveys are full of survivors, and silent about everyone who hit a wall and left.
Like the wartime planes, the obvious move - reinforce where you see the damage - is exactly wrong: the planes hit elsewhere never came back to be counted. Your product is the same. The bullet holes you can see are the survivors' complaints; the fatal ones are in the users who already left and aren't in your data at all.
