Journal · 27 January 2026

Why DAU is a lazy north star

A north star is supposed to constrain you. Daily active users constrain almost nothing. They rise when you send a push, when the clocks change, and when a celebrity mentions the category.

In Product Signal Studio we ask a blunt question of any proposed north star: what would we stop doing if this number went up for the wrong reason? If the answer is “nothing,” you have a dashboard tile, not a star.

Three apps that looked busy

A Leeds retail app counted anyone who opened the home screen. A push about a bank holiday sale lifted DAU while the share of people who placed a second order in thirty days slipped. The board congratulated growth. Operations noticed the warehouse overtime.

A Bristol media app treated auto-playing audio as activity. DAU glittered. Completion of a full episode — the thing the editor cared about — sat still. When we redrew activation as “finished one episode without a skip-forward in the first minute,” the room went quiet in a useful way.

A Glasgow fitness product counted any session longer than ten seconds. People opened the app to dismiss a reminder. The reminder programme was a DAU machine and a coaching failure.

Choose a star that can embarrass you

Good north stars have a lag, a quality bar, and a way to look worse after a cheap trick. Funded-and-returned. Episode finished. Workout logged with heart-rate, not merely opened. These numbers are uglier in week one. They are also harder to game with a badge colour.

We are not against counting people who showed up. We are against letting that count settle arguments it cannot understand. If your Tuesday review still opens on DAU, try putting it on slide five and putting the embarrassing metric on slide two. Board Pack Analytics exists for that rearrangement; this essay is the argument for why it is not cosmetic.