Day — 3 Google Product Interview Preparation

 

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How would you improve Facebook News Feed?

Interviewer: How would you increase engagement on Facebook News Feed?

Shailesh: Thanks for the question but before that let me clarify my understanding of Facebook Newsfeed so that we are aligned on it. Facebook newsfeed is one of the core functionality of Facebook other than messaging, video calling, following profiles of friends etc. Facebook news feed lets you to know current happening around you or let people know or express opinions about things that you care about. This is completely aligned with the Facebook mission of connecting people and expressing themselves. Is my understanding regarding the Facebook newsfeed clear or do you want me to focus on some other functionality that I missed probably?
Interviewer: Now this understanding is good to go.

Shailesh: I have some questions that I want to clarify since improvement can be of different types if I tied it to the business objective. It can be of increasing revenue, increasing engagement on the feed, or we are going to acquire more and more users? what is the objective of the improvement? According to my, Newsfeed is a place that has infinite scrolling, Facebook puts a lot of advertisement there and facebook’s revenue model revolve around advertisement, so it would make sense for me to think about increasing engagement, what do you think?
Interviewer: Yeah the assumption seems okay, we are also seeing people are scrolling news feeds but not reacting to the same. So we want to make it more engaging.

Shailesh: Okay, but when you say that people are not reacting, they are not commenting on pictures or they aren’t even reacting to them, because the reaction feature may cannibalise the commenting one. So what is exactly we are looking at? Are we looking at improving overall engagement on the picture?
Interviewer: Yeah we are looking at overall engagement on the Facebook newsfeed.

Shailesh: Are we looking for improvement on specific platforms like desktop or mobile or any particular geography?
Interviewer: No we want to increase the engagement globally.

Shailesh: One last question I have is, do we have any time or resource constraints or we are not bound by this.
Interviewer: No, we don’t have any resources constraint, but we want to see the improved result in 1 quarter or 2.

Shailesh: Alright, let me quickly form the objective of the problem from whatever we have discussed till now. The main objective of the problem is to increase the overall engagement on the Facebook newsfeed and we are not bound by anything.
Interviewer: Perfect, please go ahead.

Shailesh: Cool, the way I would like to approach this problem is, first will see our customer segment and their user journey and, depending on that, will see some of the pain points. After prioritizing the pain points, we can see potential solutions and corresponding success metrics. At last, we can think of some of the potential tradeoffs or some future aspects of the Solution. Sounds okay?
Interviewer: Sounds Great, please go ahead.

Shailesh: There can be different user persona of people who are using Facebook broadly there can be 3groups which are content creators, content consumers and advertisers. Here we can assume that 10% of people are content creators and 90% are content consumers so I would go ahead a focus more on content consumers because they are driving the engagement on the Facebook Newsfeed. So if I have to put the user persona in a more MECE way we would be having the following user personas.

User Persona

FB Explorer: They are our power users, they are young, tech-savvy and want to explore different videos, photos, posts on Facebook. They spend quite a lot of time on Facebook and exploring different things.

FB Focused: They are the ones who are our medium users, they may be young professionals who don’t get much time in their day to explore all this stuff. They also comprised introverted people who silently consume content.

FB Casual: They are the ones who are not very interested in Facebook, they don’t spend much time on the platform. They open Facebook like once or twice a week.

Shailesh: I will stop for a while if you have any questions on this?
Interviewer: No this is good, you can go ahead with this.

Shailesh: Okay now let me prioritise the user persona, so I would like to pick the focused users because they are the ones who are coming onto that platform but still not making any engagement. The explorers are kind of extroverts on the platform, they are engaging. So if we have solved the problem for the FB Focused users, we will be able to solve the problem for the majority of people. Are we aligned on this?
Interviewer: please go-ahead

Shailesh: Now we will see some of the pain points of the selected User persona.

Pain points

1. Spam/Misinformation/Irrelevant Content: One of the painpoint is that people cannot find relevant, good quality content on the newsfeed. They are moving away from the feed because they think the kind of information is based, spam and not relevant to them.
2. No personalised engaging content: Even though Facebook uses machine learning and AI to make the content more dynamic and engaging, people still got bored from the newsfeed to seeing the same old type of content.
3. Shyness: People often don’t want to comment on some pictures and want to regret 3–4 years later, so they choose not to comment on some photos, they are kind of shy and don’t want their information to go in public and stay there forever.

Shailesh: These are the problems that focused FB users can get, so if I have to prioritise the problem and pain points, I would like to go ahead and see the intensity and the frequency of the pain. This way we will be ensuring that we are covering the depth and width of the problem. According to my, all are potential problems to solve but if I have to tie to the objective of the problem to increase engagement, I would go ahead and pick pain point #3. What do you think?

<But for practice per se, we would be looking solution for all of them.>

Interviewer: yes you can go ahead with this.

Shailesh: let's look at the different solutions for the pain points

Solution to pain point #1

1. Facebook can have a bot crawler that is crawling on the different profiles and making sure that the spam content isn’t
2. Facebook can have features in which they can hire content creators and have FB pages for different genes. People will be able to verify the FB owned pages and can follow them according to their will.

Solution to pain point #2

1. 3d Video and Images: Facebook has a lot of data, photos, videos of places, landscapes, food etc. There are a lot of people who have their profile public, Facebook can make a 3d images and videos using AI/ML and people can search for the same. This will be more engaging content. For example, if I have searched for “Grand Canyon”, Facebook can create a 3d image or video from all the photos it has and users can watch those to have a great experience.
2. Meta posts: Facebook has acquired Oculus. Their mission is to provide a more immersive experience through Meta, so people can know view photos and videos in a more immersive and real way.
3. Integration with Calendar: Facebook can integrate with the calendar to give more personalised content and suggestion for an upcoming events. For example, let’s say I have booked a ticket for Goa, it should show me the content like favourite places to visit, Selfie points, Pose which gets maximum likes on Facebook because human being needs validation and if they know prehand that this post will get maximum likes, they will try to replicate that.

Solution to pain point #3

1. Comment Privately: Facebook can have a feature in which a person can comment on a photo privately, the comment will be visible to the one which the commenter wants to know.
2. Comment for 24 hours: People who don't want to let their data or comment on Facebook for a much longer period of time, can go and make the comment available for 24 hours. After that, the thread/comment will automatically delete.

Prioritisation

Shailesh: The features “Comment Privately” & “Comment for 24 hours” are both very good features for making a person active but we can go ahead with “Comment for 24 hours” because “Comment Privately” can cannibalise the messengers. We can also hire content creators to have more FB owned pages. So finally my recommendation for the near future is to have feature “Comment for 24 hours” and “FB Owned Pages”. Should I go ahead and define some metrics to track the success.

Success Metrics

1. Average time spend by a user per day on News Feed.
2. Average number of sessions of a user on Facebook
3. Average number of comments per post

How would you improve Amazon Kindle?

Interviewer: How would you improve Amazon Kindle?

Shailesh: First let me clarify my understanding of Kindle, Kindle is a device that is widely used for reading e-books. It is a device where you can purchase books and read them, it gives the same immersive experience which a user gets while reading the hardcopy of the book. This is particularly designed for reading purposes without minimal distraction so that you can’t install much of the applications and the browser also isn’t that good. This is my broad understanding of the Kindle Device. It also comes as a digital application that you can install via the play store or apps store. Is my understanding of the device okay, or do do you want me to focus on something else?
Interviewer: I think, it is good to proceed with the question.

Shailesh: Alright, I have some questions which I want to get clarified. Since improvement can be of different type and if I tie it to some business metric, we will be having improvement in terms of acquisition of more users, improvement in reading experience for more engagement, or improving monetisation. What do we explicitly focus on? According to my, we can think of improvement in the reading experience and bringing more engagement on the device which can be further used to increase revenue.
Interviewer: Yeah we can go ahead and improve the reading experience on Kindle.

Shailesh: Okay also I am assuming we are doing improvement on Kindle as a device not on Kindle as an application since that is that one which derives more revenue or we can think both as well.
Interviewer: Yeah, you can go ahead with both.

Shailesh: One more question which I want to ask is, do we have any resource or time constraints? I am asking this question because it may play an important role while prioritising the features.
Interviewer: No you aren’t bound by that but make sure that the features don’t increase the cost of the kindle.

Shailesh: Alright, I have a fair understanding of the problem statement, let me quickly form an objective of the problem, we want to improve the reading experience of a reader on a kindle platform while will ultimately derive more engagement and any constraints don’t bind us. sounds okay?
Interviewer: Yeah perfect.

Shailesh: Cool, the way I would like to approach this problem is, first will see our customer segment and their user journey and, depending on that, will see some of the pain points. After prioritizing the pain points, we can see potential solutions and corresponding success metrics. At last, we can think of some of the potential tradeoffs or some future aspects of the Solution. Sounds okay?
Interviewer: Sounds Great, please go ahead.

Shailesh: There can be multiple personas of users who are using Kindle but if I have to put them in a more MECE way, we would be having the following personas.

User Persona

1. Avid Readers/Business leaders or executives: They are the ones who love to read about anything and everything. They read smany books in a year and are our power users. They want to explore different types of genres and increase their knowledge. They read around 20+ books in a year.
2. Focused Readers: They are ones who know what they are interested in and they read book pertaining to that only. They are our medium users, they can be students or professors. Sometimes they read around 3–4 books in a year.
3. Occasional Readers: They are the ones who read the book occasionally, for them reading is a boring activity but they want to become avid readers. They try hard to build the habit of reading but they lose track in between.
4. Fashion Readers: They are the ones who don’t love reading that much but they bought Kindle because everyone in their circle bought one.

Shailesh: I think we can target the Occasional readers because they are the ones who wants to inculcate the reading habit and they try hard as well. Avid readers and focused readers are the ones who in any case will read the books no matter what difficulty they face. And if we put all the user's persona on a normal curve, Occasional readers are the ones who will lie in the middle because they are in larger numbers. So solving problems for them will increase the engagement more. what do you think?
Interviewer: I think this is a fair assumption.

User Journey

Shailesh: Now let’s think of their user journey so that we can think of the potential pain points. The user journey of the occasional reader can be divided into stages like “Get recommendation of books to read”, “Buy subscription or e-book”, “Start reading”, “Get demotivated”, “start again”, “Complete the book or left it” and finally “Share the experience with people. Are you aligned with this and should I go ahead and think of the potential pain points to solve?

Interviewer: I think it is okay, please go ahead.
Shailesh: Let’s think of some of the pain points of occasional readers.

Pain Points

1. They got demotivated or bored about reading or completing books.
2. When they return, they don't even know what they have read until now?
3. Sometimes they find it tough to comprehend whatever they read, are they reading in a proper manner.
4. They sometimes don’t realise how this book will help them in the future?

Shailesh: These are the pain points which I would like to solve, should I go ahead and pick one of them?
Interviewer: Yes sure

Shailesh: I would like to pick the pain point by seeing the intensity and frequency of the problem. I will also see if solving this problem is aligned with our broader objective of the problem. I think the first step is the one is getting motivated to for habit. First, we need to solve this problem then the further problem will make sense. I will pause for a while if you have any questions about this and are aligned on this.
Interviewer: Yes you can go ahead and solve this problem.

Shailesh: Okay there can be the following solutions for the pain points.

Solutions/Feature sets

1. Stickers: Amazon kindle can have a feature of amazing book stickers which comes with the purchase of book so that the person can put these stickers on their laptop, screen which reminds them that they have bought the book and they need to complete it. Amazon can also provide them to have physical stickers which they can put into their rooms, office desks etc. [low effort][mid impact]
2. Timeline Integration with Calendar: Before starting the book, Kindle can provide a feature in which the person can set the goal of completing the book. The goal will be automatically integrated with the calendar and will provide you with a set of reminders for the goal.[mid effort][high impact]
3. Gamification: Amazon Kindle can provide the gamification feature in which if a person has achieved some goal, so he will be earning a gamification wheel, spinning to which will fetch them offers, discounts, reward points to buy something from Amazon in future. [high effort][high impact]
4. Leaderboard: Amazon kindle can provide them a feature of the leaderboard among friends and acquaintances who are also reading on Kindle. A human being is inherently very competitive, so they will want to get on the top of the leaderboard. [mid effort][high impact]
5. Human Tracker: Amazon kindle can have a feature in which you can opt for a human tracker which will keep track of your goal of reading. He will also help you to comprehend and discuss interesting points with them. Human beings have some kind of ego, so they will disappoint themselves but not disappoint themselves in front of others.[high effort][high impact]

Shailesh: All of the features can be a potential solution for the problem, but I need to pick one solution for the same. I would go ahead with the “Timeline integration with Calendar”. let me define some metrics for the same

Success Metrics

1. Number of books completed by a users in a month.
2. Average number of reading minutes per user per month.