The Tab-Hopper
Multitabus distractus
Appearance
Integument difficult to identify. The Tab-Hopper is rarely viewed in full, only in glimpses, between other tabs. Often spotted with five open instances of your product.
Habitat
Multi-account setups. Anywhere comparison is required. The Tab-Hopper is also frequently observed in the wild on Slack, Linear, and three different documentation sites simultaneously.
Field notes
The Tab-Hopper arrives intending to complete a task. It opens a second tab to verify a detail. It opens a third tab to consult a doc. The third tab contains a link that leads to a fourth. By the time the fifth tab opens, the Tab-Hopper has forgotten why the first tab was opened, and is thinking about something completely different.
Resolution
The Tab-Hopper returns to the first tab three days later. Maybe even three weeks later. Sometimes The Hopper finishes the task. Other times, it opens a sixth tab and repeats the same process from the start. Many, many times.
Hazards observed
No single failure to blame. The product worked. The user has the attention span of a fruit fly on espresso, and your product is one of seven things asking for it.
If you spot one
Tab-switching is not a defect in your product, so do not try to fix the switching. The signal worth having is the task they started and left. Replay Vision trims idle time out of each recording and a tab switch is idle time, so the hop never appears on camera. The abandoned task does. Run a Monitor scanner for it, save those users as a cohort, and give them a reason to come back with an in-app nudge or an email.