Design Youtube for Senior Citizens [Product Management Interview Question]

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Interviewer: Design Youtube for senior citizens.

Shailesh: That’s a great question, but before that, let me clarify some questions before moving on to the solution. Do we need to design this in Youtube itself, or it will be a separate application altogether?
Interviewer: You decide.

Shailesh: Youtube already has a vast customer base, so is there any particular goal/vision for designing this?
Interviewer: Our customer base has a negligible proportion of senior citizens, so we want to acquire them.

Shailesh: Alright! since we are developing this for senior citizens, they generally have disabilities ranging from minute to large. In general, at the older stage of life, we have a lower vision; we can consider that as well; what do you think?
Interviewer: You decide.

Shailesh: One more question, any resource or time constraint which I should be aware of because it may play a role in prioritizing the features and putting them into the product roadmap.
Interviewer: There is no resource constraint, and you can assume that we have to deliver it in a year.

Shailesh: Great! Okay, so now let me reiterate our goal based on what we have discussed. We need to build Youtube for senior citizens on the same platform, and the goal is to onboard as many senior citizens as we can.
Interviewer: Yes

Shailesh: With that said, let me give an overview of how I would approach this problem. First, we will see different users and will prioritize them based on our goal. Then we can see the user journey of the selected user to understand their pain points. From there, we can go and think of some of the solutions and prioritize them. We can see some metrics to track the success of our solution, can see potential tradeoffs and future technologies.
Interviewer: Please go-ahead

You can now filter posts depending on your interest

Shailesh: Let’s see our user segment

User Persona

  1. X: A person aged 55 is tech-savvy, a power user who loves to watch videos/news on different OTT platforms. He is the one who watches videos daily.
  2. Y: A person aged 60 who occasionally watches videos like movies, cricket matches etc.
  3. Z: A person aged 65 who doesn’t know about Youtube at all.

I would like to focus on Y, who occasionally watches movies, cricket matches etc. I am focusing on this segment because this segment has a more significant total addressable market; the availability of high-speed internet is increasing day by day and penetrating the rural areas. I don’t want to focus on Z because they may not drive the required engagement, and we have to spend a lot in acquiring those customers. They may be happy with other activities like socializing with friends and families and not think to spend time on Youtube. Solving the problem for Y will also solve it for X.
Let’s see the user journey of Y

User Journey of Y

  1. Got to know about some movies/matches through friends or social group
  2. They switch on the TV or ask somebody to open OTT platforms like Hotstar, Netflix etc.
  3. They watch the match and sometimes try to change the channel or explore the OTT platform.
  4. Either they see the complete movie in one go or leave it in between.
  5. Some other day they come to watch the same video or a new one.
  6. Try to recall the movie till the time they have watched it.
  7. Complete the movie and talk about the movie in their social group etc.

Pain Points

  1. Getting to know about upcoming matches and movies is a pain; it frustrates them if they miss an important cricket match.
  2. They might feel the pain of handling the Youtube platform, such as signing in, searching the content, etc.
  3. They might get overwhelmed and confused about what they should watch because of the plethora of options.
  4. They may leave something in between due to some work, and when they come back, they may not recall.
  5. Sometimes they may find it difficult to understand the accent, and the caption may be very small to read.
  6. After finishing the series, they may get confused about what to do next?
  7. They may find it difficult to share with their social group if they find anything interesting.

For the solution, I assume that we are building a mobile application because the mobile penetration is huge, and not many people have laptops and computers, so we should go for the mobile application. Senior people can carry mobile anywhere anytime and can start watching whatever they want.

Solutions/Features:

  1. On Youtube, we can have a separate mode for senior people like we have Kids mode. We can use an AI recommendation engine to curate the content based on watching history and preference while onboarding onto the platform.
  2. The voice searching option will be there so that they don’t have to type to search any content; the voice assistant can do the job for them.
  3. We can give push notifications on their mobile for the upcoming matches etc.
  4. Since many people are using WhatsApp, we can integrate WhatsApp into their Youtube accounts so that senior citizens can get reminders from WhatsApp as a chat for any upcoming movies or matches.
  5. Senior citizens can have disabilities like low eyesight; we can have the provision of setting font size as much as we want. They will also be able to increase the font size of the video's subtitles.
  6. Socialisation is an important trait of human behaviour, which becomes even more important at an older age. Youtube hasn’t leveraged the power of socialisation as the culture of following your friends isn’t there. We can have Youtube Social where senior people can follow their friends, and they will get a notification if their friends have suggested something to watch. Senior people can also post videos if they have come across something very interesting. One tap sharing with friends will also increase engagement on the platform. Privacy of individuals is very important, so people will not be able to see the view history of their friends, as it won’t alter the video recommendation for individuals.
  7. If they have left some video in between, we can give push or WhatsApp chat notifications. In addition to that, we can also have a recap of every video-assisted with a skip. After seeing the recap videos, they may be able to recall whatever they have seen earlier.
  8. After completing any movie/video, Youtube can ask if they like it or not and depending on that, it will be able to suggest future content.

The above solutions may have some trade-offs, like people may not be very willing to give their WhatsApp number to have a WhatsApp chat notification. In that case, push notification can be used.

For prioritisation, Features #1, #2, #3, #5 are must-have features as they address the basic requirement of any senior citizen.
Features #7, #8, and #4 are should have features.

Feature #6 is nice to have features as people can now talk about their seen videos or share their videos with friends via WhatsApp.

Success Metrics.

  1. Increase in the #senior citizens on the platform
  2. Increase in the Average #push notification clicked by senior citizen in a week.
  3. Increase in the average #voice search by a senior citizen in a week.
  4. Increase in the average #videos watched by senior citizens in a day
  5. Increase in the average #session by a senior citizen in a day
  6. Increase in the average session length by a senior citizen.
  7. Ratio of the number of videos watched by a senior citizen using search/voice search or AI recommendation.

-TechnoManagers

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