When intuition fails against data

The "Lite" Trap

We often fall into the trap of thinking mobile apps should be "Lite" versions of the desktop product. We strip away complexity to fit the screen.

I argued that Forking (cloning a codebase to your own account) was a desktop task. It implies you're about to write code, edit files, and engage in deep work. Since the phone isn't an IDE, and honestly not really great for larger coding tasks, I assumed the feature was dead weight.

The signal in the noise

The requests didn't stop. Users were hacking around it, opening the desktop site on mobile Safari just to hit the Fork button.

When users fight your tool to do a simple task, you're usually missing something fundamental.

We dug deeper. We found that people weren't forking to code, they were forking to bookmark for later use.

Intent vs Execution

Forking on GitHub Mobile wasn't about execution. It was about "claiming" a project. It was a way to say, "I want to work on this later."

By blocking the feature, we were blocking their momentum. We were forcing them to remember the idea until they got to a laptop, or to star the repository to get back to it later. And ideas usually die in that gap.

Shipping what they needed, not what I wanted

We shipped it. It wasn't fancy… Just the standard flow adapted for touch, made a bit more simple.

Adoption was immediate. It became a primary action for GitHub Mobile sessions. Users would find a repo on the bus, fork it, and then code on it when they got home.

What surprised us

The biggest surprise was that this wasn't just a niche feature. A lot of people were using it, are still using it. They used it to start working when they only had their phones or just to keep a copy of a project they liked, where starring doesn't feel like the correct choice.

It proved that the feature was really about making sure people didn't lose their momentum when they were away from their desks. It was about capturing an idea the moment it happened.

Strategic Humility

The lesson wasn't about Forking. It was about checking my own bias.

As designers, we often over-rationalize constraints. We say "mobile is for consumption" or "desktop is for creation". But users don't care about our categories.

They just want to capture the idea before it fades. Product surfaces should not be artificially limited to specific use cases or devices, and teams should think holistically about requests, and how they impact workflows of users.