Associate Product Manager (APM) Mock Interview: Favorite Product

what's your favorite product and how would you improve it hey everyone we're here today to do a product management mock interview we're going to be focusing on a product design question about michelle's favorite product but before we jump into it michelle could you tell us a little bit more about yourself yeah hi everyone i'm michelle um i am a current apm at yahoo rising media and a recent virtual graduate of swarthmore college and i recently also started a site project but now much bigger um called apm map which is basically going to be your one stop destination for finding every sort of product management resource that you might need in your interview prep process um yeah so i would love for you to check it out and i think there will be more um more details in the description box below yeah totally and uh michelle it's so great to have you also someone who cares a lot about helping guide people through their careers i think it's always really important to have resources and help for people with a really tough process of interviewing for folks watching exponent helps people land their dream tech job we do this with our online courses coaching and community and so we don't believe you should interview alone we believe you should interview with others and that's why we have a whole set of resources that help people in their interviews for tech roles you can check it out at triathlon.com but before we get too deep in the weeds on that i would love to jump into this interview with you michelle um and so the question today we're going to be doing is a product design question where you'll be asked to you know what your favorite product is and then we'll be diving into a little bit more of the design of how you'd improve that product um and so just to summarize my question today for you is what's your favorite product and how would you improve it awesome thank you so much steven um before we start um i'm just quickly going to section off so i'll first spend maybe like a couple minutes or so talking about the favorite product what is it why do i love it um and then we'll dive into the improvement does that sound good that sounds great thanks for checking in yeah for sure um okay so one of my all-time favorite products is this app called marco polo um so really quickly what is marco polo marco polo is a mobile app where you can send videos to your friends or loved ones and basically stay connected with the people you care the most about um when especially when life gets really busy um so you can kind of think of it as video chat but with the convenience of texting um in terms of why am i so passionate about this product uh there are three core reasons that i'm sort of thinking through uh the first just being the the core value of marco polo so um you know marco polo's all about connecting with people you care about it's about the deep connection that you foster with others so in in many ways it is a media that is social but uh doesn't come with all the downsides of social media um so there are no likes there are social comparisons no infinite scroll to waste your time you can simply send videos to your friends and loved ones um just to check in catch up see how everyone how everyone is doing um and not necessarily have to catch up with the entire world um so i like to think of it as the quality of a video chat with a good friend without all this hassle scheduling and time zone constraints um which is actually number two why i love marco polo um so the second reason being it's extremely convenient um so like i mentioned you know you can send a polo to a friend and receive a polo and watch a polo um at any time at your convenience so the asynchronous nature of sending and receiving polos means that you know you can do away with all of the you know are you free at 9 00 pm you know what what time zone are you in right and doing all of that sort of scheduling hassle and managing for where everyone is geographically um and you know not take away from the quality of that video chat right so i'm really going back to this idea of like it's just as convenient as texting but uh without all the emotional ambiguity of texting and uh you know really retaining that high quality face time that you get with others via apps like facetime or or even zoom um so the last point that i think makes smarterpolar really really great is that it's also very easy to use so um you know you can get right to the core value with really just you know three steps um you can uh launch the app find the friend or the family member that you want to uh send a video to and then you just hit record and you just start talking so um the sort of the the larger benefit of this is that you know i can send a polo to my 12 year old brother also my college friends also my parents also my grandma right so there's a really wide range of people that i can use this with because you know i care about a lot of people my life and i want to make sure i stay connected so it's really good to be able to do that all in one place yeah so just want to check in does that sound good yeah that sounds great michelle um would love to hear i mean it sounds like this is a really special app to you like um i'd love to hear yeah how would you go about improving it yeah thank you so much steven um yeah let me can i have like 30 or so seconds and i'm just gonna think through um some yeah some details uh just before i do take those 30 seconds i'm really just to think through you know what is the about like what is the existing landscape like who are marco polo's direct indirect competitors um talk a little bit more about goals like you know at this point in their life stage right look what is marco polo looking to improve on um we'll then sort of think through like customer segments pain points um and then we'll do all of that before we get to solutions and then if time permits we'll do some trade-offs and do some metrics of success and stuff like that does that sound good that sounds great yeah and feel free to take as much time as you need okay thank you i'll take about like 30 seconds to flush this out okay um okay so let me so let's first chat well so before we even dive into customer segments let's first chat about like what what is what is the landscape right where where can we potentially improve on um what are other people doing what are the goals um okay so thinking through this i think the current landscape really falls into two distinct buckets um the first being like traditional social media right we love our twitters and our facebooks and our instagrams um and i think you know they're very similar to marco polo in the sense that these are all platforms that people use to stay connected with people they care about um some platforms you're also staying connected to people you don't care about um and i think that kind of leads us into the drawbacks a little bit right so traditional social media you know can feel really inauthentic it can also feel uh you know very disconnected right there's all these likes and branding and ads and social comparison and it's a time spent on social media apps oftentimes feel uh leave people feeling more disconnected um which i think is really not what the original intent of social media was meant to be but that's conversation for another day um on the flip side i think marco polo is really focused on one-on-one interactions or maybe even small group interactions that you feel really authentic and oftentimes do leave you feeling more connected with people that you care about than you were before so i think that's uh the unique difference that marco polo has against traditional social media in terms of the other existing uh bucket that i think is relevant to marco polo is traditional video chat so we're very familiar with this nowadays and in the era of covid um we have you know facetime we have zoom we have google me right there there are lots of um you know technology out there that supports uh video chat so in this sense mark paul is not really unique in that it also operates on the video platform but i think also primary uh difference that makes marco polo stand out here is also that uh what i mentioned earlier there's the asynchronous nature of sending videos to your friends um the app also stores the videos for you so uh i think that is something that traditional facetime zoom google meet do not necessarily lend itself to um i guess you could technically like record and then send the video over but that's just it's just it's just too much so uh realistically marco polo definitely does have an edge up here um so pause really quickly does that sound good to you stephen like does that make sense yeah that makes a lot of sense and um yeah i think you know if we had more time i'd love to or maybe at some point go back to the the idea of social media and um how like the trends in social media relate to this because i think it's a very interesting discussion but only if it kind of relates to the ways you're going to improve it yeah i'd love to we could make some commentary on it towards the end because i have lots of thoughts on that um yeah okay sweet so i think we have a good understanding of like current landscape so i think the next important piece to tackle before we even get into you know customers and solutions and stuff like that as to how to improve um is like what are our goals going into this right um so i have a couple thoughts um you know marco polo is not a new app it's been around for i think it launched maybe like early 2012 so i think it's it's almost almost been been around for a decade um and so in that sense it's not new it definitely has an existing user base i think it has like 10 million ratings on on the app store so it definitely has a dedicated fan base um i think another important piece to keep in mind is that um they also recently launched a marco polo plus so like a premium version of the the app so i think with that in mind i think the ultimate goal is definitely to upsell users to marco polo plus but i think before we can even get to that upselling point there needs to be engaged users who like really buy into the core value prop of marco polo right so i think in terms of improvement where we'll have the most impact i think is really honing in on increasing engagement of existing users maybe also pulling in some new users but i think the assumption i'm making here is that the more engaged users are the more likely they'll be willing to be upsold to something like marco polo plus um but we can talk a little bit more about like monetization strategy and stuff towards the end as well um okay so does that sound good to you yeah that sounds great so we're gonna focus on engagement for the purposeless uh exercise that sounds awesome yeah perfect okay so um yeah quick quick quick recap um so i think we have a pretty good uh out understanding of the landscape we know goals um so i think the next thing i'll do is i'll take like 20 or so seconds and just think through some like who are the customers like what are their pain points um and then we'll sort of evaluate those customers against the goal that we've already laid out as engagement um and then we'll talk through some solutions sounds great okay sweet so i'll take 20 years in seconds here go for it okay so i think i have some customer segments i think that would fit really well with marco polo um okay awesome okay so um the three sort of primary customer buckets that i'm thinking of right now are students and i'm thinking mostly college students i think high school students are probably still you know home relatively within the range of their family and their friends um and then i'm gonna look at young adults and working professionals um but you know early career working professionals um and then i'm going to look at parents as a potential customer segment as well um okay so starting with students specifically college students so some pain points uh yeah something this is a customer segment that i was i was very recently a part of um so i think some of the pain points that i remember um include like you know homesickness you know missing fam family and friends um you know also feeling kind of lost right i think college is a time to discover yourself and you know be sad and then be happy but you found yourself right there's a lot of self-discovery that happens in college i think that oftentimes leads to a feeling of disconnect and a feeling of uh lostness um and then also i think uh you know we should definitely be considering the existing pandemic which i think is going to shape a lot of college experiences for many years to come so i think with that in mind i think you know my sister's currently in college and she's very isolated in her dorm and wants to stay connected with people on campus but also wants to stay connected with family and with friends from home um also related to kobe but definitely like there's a lot of zoom fatigue i'm sure um you know from class and general burnout just from being at college and then i think another pain point is also just like you know being mindful of your budget and being mindful of uh not overspending i think that's something that college students often do have to think about as well um and then for the second bracket i'm thinking for young adults and working professionals um quite similar to college students i think you know oftentimes young like young adults have also moved to a new city they want to meet new people they want to uh you know also keep in touch with loved ones back home right now in covet also feeling a lot of zoom fatigue from work um which i for you know from my own personal experience i think a lot of the times it really can be interpreted as like a lack of deep connection right we're numb to all these work meetings and seeing people on screens and only having shallow human connection um so i think that's kind of the the larger pain point the larger theme that i want to call out um and then also with cobit i think you're either generally physically isolated because you're living alone in a new city or emotionally isolated because maybe you're like me are back home in your parents house and not necessarily being able to see friends in new cities and such um so really quickly for the last customer segment for parents i think similarly they may want to keep in touch with their children who have moved to college or moved to a new city um they're definitely very busy with balancing work and family um and then also giving coven i think there are definitely families out there who are being mindful of money right now given the instability of covid and the job market so all all pain points to kind of keep in mind um so in terms of like determining which customer segment makes the most sense to focus on in terms of our improvement i'm thinking of you know going back to the goal of increasing engagement right um which ultimately is an upsell to mark plus um so from this it definitely seems like you know students and young adults slash working professionals do share a lot of pain points with this theme of like isolation and lack of deep connection um but i do think that uh you know college students tend to be more budget-friendly so i think with that in mind especially if we're trying to upsell eventually it makes more sense to focus on young adults working professionals right now who are more likely to pay for something like marco polo plus in the end um so i think for for the purposes of this we'll move move ahead with young adults but does that sound good yeah sounds great let's do it see okay um so i'm gonna take i'm gonna be my full time how much time do we have last uh we have some time yeah feel free to take time to to exercise yeah okay sweet um let me take another 20 seconds and just think through some solutions and potential trade-offs and then okay see okay awesome so let's talk through some solutions um okay so before i dive in um so when i was thinking through this the sort of the primary point i was working with was you know isolation lack of deep connection i think that's a general common theme and also very relevant to our current society um so i mean i think that was sort of the focal point for a lot of these solutions um so really quickly high overview um the three solutions i have and the first one i'm calling friendships of virtue which yes it is rooted in aristotelian philosophy which i might get into if you have time and then basically what this idea is is that we marco polo allow users to share like you know here are my goals in life like here's how i'm getting closer to those goals and then prompt friends to send videos uh you know cheering you on and for a milestone or maybe you went through like a rejection right there's there's that level of like you're sharing information that is relevant that is uh you know suited for your goals um and your friends will come back into the app and send you videos to support you um across italian friendships of virtue are all based on wishing well for others without self-interest so this is our best way of mimicking that that i've thought of in the last 20 seconds the second solution i have in mind is a gratitude board so uh what if we gave users gratitude boards on their mercopolo profiles where they can leave nice messages for themselves for others others can do the same and there's this like a potential increase in engagement there um and then the third idea i'm thinking of is a gottman cards integration so if you're not familiar with gotten cards basically just like integrating like meaningful prompts into the app so like maybe it's like you know like what is like what is something you're afraid of right like maybe that's that's a question that you prompt users and then you can sort of bring like friend a and friend b back into the app so they can answer this prompt um and that'll start a whole conversation um so really quickly uh i'll pause really quickly do we have time to dive into some trade-offs for them yeah let's do it and we'd love to maybe pick one of these solutions that we feel like would accomplish our goals most effectively yeah yeah would you want me to go through and do some trade-offs for all of them and then pick the pick the one that i'm thinking or should i just yeah let's do it i think we have time for some of the trade-offs and then we can pick the one that we feel like is the best yeah perfect yeah that sounds great um okay so starting with the first one so this idea of like friendships of virtue but on marc polo um yeah so i think you know the pros definitely it's getting at the core pain point of you know lack of deep connection um because your friends now know what you're thinking about what you care about what you're working towards and can support you towards those goals and i also think that it's you know giving users new reasons to use marco polo so there is that uh venue for increased engagement um i think the biggest con that comes to mind is like this is introducing infrastructure that doesn't exist so like profiles tracking goals viewing other profiles um so just at a high level it seems like this could be a pretty high level of effort from engineering and that so much so that maybe this could actually be a feature that is included in marco polo plus as opposed to a feature that is free to get people to use workflow plus so i think that's the not that this is a bad idea i love this idea but you know i think there's definitely some engineering constraints to keep in mind um for the gratitude board so pro very wholesome i have my own gratitude board i feel very strongly about this one but um and i i do think it's also getting at the pain point of you know lack of deep connection um and and all of those things since also potentially also giving users a new opportunity to engage the app um a short-term engagement with the app since it's you know if you're too busy to leave like a video maybe you could leave like a like a gratitude note um but similar i think the the other big drawback is similar to the the infrastructure that doesn't exist high level effort from engineering drawback that uh we just ran into with the first solution um i think the the biggest voices that this actually takes away from the core value prop of sending videos which i don't think we want to do because um a lot of the features on marco polo plus are currently focused on the video platform itself so i think increased engagement if we're going to get any of that should be focused on the video um and then lastly for the the sort of the meaningful card prompts integration gottman cards integration uh i think similarly it also gets at like the pain point of lack of deep connections i think all of these are doing a good job of getting at that theme um i think the the one thing one thing it definitely has above is that uh you know it's increasing engagement around sending videos because you know this could take a lot of forms but i could also see it just being like notifications right it's like oh here is a prompt right and you see it and it pulls you back into the app so i think um it's definitely increasing engagement towards the videos themselves um and then also uh because it could be as simple as like a notification sort of thing um it doesn't seem like we'd be introducing huge new infrastructure so this could be maybe a small to medium level level which makes sense in terms of you know improving the free version of the app for the the premium version um the immediate con that comes to mind is like maybe we'd have to like license like um existing card decks like gotten cards and maybe that could be a hassle but i think the plus is that you know at the end of the day gottman cards are just uh yeah they're just mean hard prompts i think if people took some time to just like come up with meaningful prompts for conversations like we could totally get around that um potential uh setback um okay so with all of this in mind i think um yeah thinking through all the pros and cons i definitely do think that gottman cards integration makes the most sense um for a lot of the pros they just outlined like you know it's increasing engagement so it's getting at our goal but it's also really getting at the the specific engagement that we want which is video engagement um gets at the the core problem that users are facing and i think it also seems like it's a pretty uh reasonable loe from engineers so i think i think there's a there's a lot of potential for this um to increase engagement on the app got it cool um so we came to something i i want to ask one follow-up question before we kind of transition into reflection and things like that um when i think about the gottman cards sounds really exciting and interesting i could hear a lot of people who are criticizing it saying it feels forced or it feels unnatural or strange how would you think about this when you think about designing the product um and what are your thoughts on that when you think about this redesign yeah yeah that's a really really good really really good point i think um something we could add that can maybe get at that problem is some level of like personalization right so maybe like on your profile um you know similar to like when you onboard onto netflix so like do you like this do you like this right and that's how they slowly build your your profile um you could have like a general sense of like hey this this user likes health and wellness and travel and um you know like family right and then maybe the question the problems that you get are the overlap between the friend that you're about to send the um the polo no yeah send the polo to um and your uh interest so maybe there's like some sort of interest overlap and that way like there's a large repository of meaningful card prompts but this is really tailored towards your likes and interests um i think uh and then maybe depending on like which prompts like actually pull the users back in you can sort of validate like is the personalization score right that you have in this person correct um and then sort of refine that way um i think that does add the drawback is that this definitely does add it um a level of complexity on the engineering side right so that's a whole like personalization recommendation engine um and i think there could also potentially be like privacy tradeoffs to keep in mind as well like marco polo i think is really built on this idea of like yeah it's there to support you and your close friendships it's not here to collect data on you and profit off of you like if it profits you're you're willingly giving them money for the premium version so i think there are some trade-offs to keep in mind but i think in terms of solving that problem specifically i think personalization definitely a really really interesting venue to take got it cool um well michelle take a deep breath you can take off the interview he had you did you did great um i would love to um kind of like talk a little bit about how the interview was for you um at exponent we believe strongly and self-feedback as one of the best ways to get better at interviews i would love to hear what you thought maybe just like a quick part on what you think went well and what you think you'd change if you went over this interview again and then um i can kind of share some of the notes of what i thought you did a really great job with yeah for sure thank you so much steven um yeah so i think something that i uh yeah have struggled with since my own actual recruiting season is just being more concise i think i do ramble a lot um and sometimes it's very enthusiastic rambling so maybe the interviewer can't tell but i think i i definitely noticed sometimes that i uh yeah i definitely go over time or you know i'm speeding up towards the end which is like arguably one of the most important parts so i like the trade-offs i think is something that i do as a pm every day right so like really being able to get that into the interview is really important so yeah i think i think i did okay on time this time but i think as someone who uh you know is working a full pm job like i definitely definitely think i could have sped up some sections a little bit more um but yeah i think in in general i think the biggest thing is um and this is kind of a half tip as well like i really am passionate about this product like this is truly like a product i care a lot about i love i'm a super user um so i think uh i definitely felt like the passion coursing through my veins i don't know if ever everyone else watching this is feeling it as well but um yeah i definitely love this i love this app to death um so i think if anything when people are doing good i i think i got asked this question you know three or four times throughout my entire recruiting season so i think just being really mindful of like don't pick the apps that like you know you think people will like right like pick your app and if i think if anything it's better when it's unique because then you can kind of like map that on to you as the interviewee um yeah definitely pick the hat like the products that you're actually passionate about it'll definitely come through in the interview totally um yeah i mean i totally agree with what you're saying uh michelle like i'll jump into some of the notes that i wrote as well about um your interview i thought um you did a great job of tying um throughout the the the answer you first set out with like kind of a vision or a goal or a north star metric like where are we going here and it's engagement and then i thought you did a really great job of bringing that back throughout the interview back um to that point so like hey i'm doing this like how do i prioritize this well maybe based on on engagement or our goal of engagement i think that's that's really important in these interviews um and i will say one of the things that i really loved is how passionate you were about the product i think it really can show like sometimes people pick a favorite product that's not actually their favorite product and it's pretty obvious to tell as an interviewee or as an interviewer because i can say like okay like i get it like your favorite product was not actually this but you're using this because you think it's a good example so i think you did a really great job with that um i think uh you know some areas that i think would would help shine even more i think you have probably a little bit of concision around some of the parts where you're talking but to be honest it didn't really bother me so much um and then i think the other piece that it's really hard to do especially with video chat but a little more eye contact with me would be nice like sometimes i notice you writing down notes or looking at your notes which um totally makes sense because it can be very comfortable place to be for an interviewee right like this is my spot i have already like things down here but i noticed that sometimes you would look down at your notes when there wasn't anything that you were speaking off of your notes from like um even the question that i i just asked you were like looking down at your notes is like how what notes do you have about how you were as an interviewee um which is i i want to reiterate is like totally natural and like totally like can be really helpful for people for those of you watching can be really helpful spot to be um but just remembering to you know either gesture to your notes or or mention them and then try to make more eye contact with your interviewer if possible can make your interview sound really good the thing that i think counterbalanced this in a way that made your answer super super effective to me was that your your candor like the way you were describing the answers was extremely genuine extremely authentic and extremely real and i think that obviated the notes and like looking down actually like because i it just felt so obvious that you were speaking from your heart and not really speaking from uh you know like something else and you're you're speaking to me directly so i think that was really awesome um and i think uh yeah just like that was my small piece of feedback about that um otherwise like i thought this was a really excellent answer you're clearly well prepared and clearly thought through it really well and it makes sense why you got an awesome apm role so um yeah totally um well i i want to wrap here and just say thanks again to you michelle for for being on the show um and for those of you watching definitely check out apm map we'll leave a link in the description below um so you can learn more about apm map um and how to get an apm role and a ton of resources that michelle and her team have laid out for folks and for those of you watching as well we encourage you to use exponent as a way to learn more about how to ace the pm interview we have detailed courses coaching um and a ton of resources to help you prepare we don't want you to do it alone we want to be there to help you support you in that journey i think something that both michelle and i um care about a lot um for those of you watching also uh please do hit the like and subscribe buttons it means a lot to us subscribing will let you get more content like this and liking lets us know that this video was valuable and will make me and michelle very happy and if you have any questions or comments michelle and i will be available to chat in the comments below so just let us know with any questions you have any thoughts or ideas about this interview question and we're happy to help out um great michelle any last words before we wrap um you got this it's hard you got this love it um yeah well thanks so much michelle for being on the show and for those of you watching good luck on your upcoming interview you

Channel: Exponent

Views: 79,937

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Id: vm5QLIiKbmI

Length: 30min 13sec (1813 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 21 2020