26 March 2025

Bangkok field notes: watching sessions in café wifi conditions

What we learned observing real sessions on busy café networks around Sukhumvit and Khlong Toei.

Lab networks rarely match a packed café on a Friday. Last spring we sat with three product teams and watched their apps under the same wifi conditions their customers actually use around Khlong Toei and Sukhumvit.

Slow image loads turned ‘browse’ sessions into abandonments that analytics labeled as short visits. Error toasts appeared after people had already navigated away. Session quality scores that looked healthy on fiber told a different story on café wifi.

We now ask every Session Quality Review whether evidence includes at least a handful of sessions from constrained networks. When it does not, we flag the gap plainly in the brief.

If your audience spends time in transit hubs and coffee shops — common across Bangkok — budget a day for observational reading outside the office. The notes you bring back often outweigh another week of chart polishing.