About the practice

Utility Garden grew out of a simple irritation: return rates presented as a single percentage, with no memory of the week, the holiday, or the failed job that actually sent people away.

Aisha Rahman started the practice after years of sitting in rooms where a “retention number” was treated as a score. The score moved; nobody could say whether Chinese New Year, a broken voucher, or a thinner sample had moved it. Utility Garden exists to slow that conversation down.

We work from Level 11 in Kuala Lumpur. The name is slightly stubborn: a garden is tended week by week, and so is a returning audience. We still write in the language of cohorts, lapsed lists, and second sessions — not in slogans about growth.

Malaysia is not a footnote. Festive calendars, prepaid data habits, and apps that serve both Malay- and English-first households change when people come back. We keep a wall calendar of public holidays and school terms because a Tuesday in mid-Ramadan is not the same Tuesday in March.

We do not sell a reporting product. If a team needs a warehouse rebuilt, we will say so and point them elsewhere. Our job is the study: reading, interviewing, writing, and standing in a workshop long enough for the product team to argue with the brief.

Who you will meet