Friction Logs?

Curious how many of you have been successful with friction logs and how.

What do I mean by ‘friction log’? = a brutally honest record of one real user’s path through your product — from the moment they realize they have a problem, through onboarding, through their first “wow” moment, all the way to the point they might churn.

Not a bug list. Bugs are isolated defects; a friction log captures the whole journey, including the stuff that’s “working as designed” but still causing people to bail.

Instead of walking into a roadmap meeting saying “I think onboarding is confusing,” you walk in with a step-by-step record of a real person hitting the same wall three times before giving up. Empathy is the fuel, but influence is the point.

I’ve seen this work beautifully when I was at Google but curious what others use and help their friction log drive meaningful product strategy direction.