Day 3 - Product Design Question 1
Practice product design questions with us...
Hello learners!
Welcome to the 3rd day of the series 30 Days of PM Interview by Crework! Yesterday, we talked about how to approach product design questions in a PM interview, but just knowing the theory is not enough right? We need to practice too. That’s what we will do today.
But before we start, make sure you are subscribed to us. In case you are not, subscribe to us right now and complete the challenge.
Imagine you're a PM ✨
Your practice question for today is:
Imagine you're a PM for Google. Design a product for air travelers. (Asked in Google interview)
Now, before we move on to “how should we approach it” part, I want you to try it. Come on, pause here for a while, bring a notebook and pen and try this question.
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I gave these spaces so that you can’t look at the solution 😂 I hope it worked. Okay, now let’s talk about how we can approach this.
First step: Ask clarifying question
By air travelers, is it safe to assume we are talking about the passengers who are commercially travelling by flights only?
Why is Google trying to do this? What is the business motivation behind this? Is google looking to make money? Make travel easier?
Are we constrained by technical feasibility? Do we have to build a software or hardware product?
Is this product supposed to be useful while travelers are in the air or can it be at any time?
You can ask other questions that might clarify the situation for you. Ask anything that you think might help you get context.
But, don’t ask too many questions. 2-3 meaningful and well thought questions are good enough to give you the right context.
Second step: Take some time to think about it
This is very important. Try to absorb the information you just got. Don’t jump to conclusions or the first ‘solution’, try to understand the problems first.
Third step: Identify the goals and personas
Now, in this step, you are supposed to share whatever you are thinking with the interviewer so that they know the direction you are taking. Generally, this is how it goes:
Google’s mission is to make data more accessible to every person on earth. We have to keep this in mind.
So, we can take the goal to enhance the travel experience for air travelers through seamless information access and data backed personalized services.
When we talk about air travel, there are these three types of users and their needs:
Business travel - usually done solo or with 2 people
What they need/ want:
Travel light
Go through the whole check-in and security process fast
Have a quite space to work from at the airport
To be able to work while in air, preferably internet too
Summary - They need efficiency, connectivity, and flexibility.
Leisure travel - usually done with a group or as a couple
What they need/ want:
To know how much time it would take for the whole group to check in
Handle a lot of baggage
Find lounge or places to eat food at the airport
Entertainment value on flight
Easily available travel options (like cabs, uber, rentals) and things to do (like most famous places) at the destination
Summary - They seek convenience, travel experiences, and value
Frequent travel
What they need/ want is most probably already covered in the points above.
They seek personalized experiences and loyalty rewards
For this problem, let’s focus on business and leisure travels and try to solve some overlapping problems for these segments in the MVP.
Fourth step: Identifying problems and coming up with solutions
The customer journey for these users look like this:
Pre-travel: Plan and book flights, accommodations and itinerary for the trip
Travel day: Navigating airports, updated flight status, finding lounges or restaurants
In flight: Entertainment, flight information, comfort, internet
Post travel: Transit to accommodation, recommendations and feedbacks on places.
The pain points common for most users in this journey are:
Difficulty in finding the best flights and offers
Confusing navigation in airports
Flight delays and lack of real-time communication
No idea about time required for security check-in at the airport
So, to solve these problems, we can come up with an application that helps the travelers in travel day problems:
App that helps you book flights and shows you the best option with offers from all platforms.
On taking the flight details, the application will provide the user with:
An estimation of the time required for the user to reach the airport and the time required for security check-in so that they can plan their time of leaving accordingly.
An internal map of the airport and the terminal to help the user navigate to security check-ins, lounges, food courts and gates inside the airport.
Live status and delay data for the user’s flights.
This product can be a good MVP to see if it solves the pain points of the users. Some metrics we can use to determine the success:
Monthly Active Users
Number of flights booked on the platform
Retention %age - %age of people who booked a flight again after booking the flight once
Number of people who use airport internal navigation maps
This was an example of how you can approach a product design question asked in a PM interview. There can be multiple ways of approaching the same problem, and there is no “right” answer. The interviewer wants to assess your ability to think and come up with a solution. The real answer is the process you use to come up with your solution.
I would love to see the solution you came up with. Please share it with us on twitter or reply to this mail.
Day 3 - Completed ✅
Congratulations on completing the 3rd lesson of the series 30 Day of PM Interview. 🥳 Now, you know what to do. Share your learnings with the world and be accountable.
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