Product sense mock interview: social video (w/ Facebook PM)

hello everyone kentucky from the rocket blocks team here in this mock interview video we're sitting down with matthew wu who is a product manager at facebook and he's specifically focused on the facebook marketplace products in this mock interview video we're going to be doing a product design and product sense question where matthew was asked to design a new social feature for one of the popular video streaming services from a big tech company so let's go ahead and jump in and see what matthew comes up with okay so thanks for joining us so the question i want to walk through with you today is imagine you are a product manager at you can pick one of these companies but netflix or amazon and you're specifically focused on video functionality and we want you to tell us how you might think about designing a social feature to augment these type of video services that are out there awesome so you know when i when i think about this i guess maybe just to broaden it a little bit um you know there's video services that are you know very content heavy where they obviously produce their own content and then there's other platforms like youtube where it's you know more of a third-party content system where people upload a variety of things yeah is there one type of company that you care about that that focus on or you know it's really up to me it's up to you to choose which direction you want to go but definitely as you mentioned like there's netflix there's amazon there's hulu there's youtube more ugc focus but you can you can pick a direction that you think is most interesting yeah i think what is a little bit more interesting just because when i think about um you know production quality content i don't know how much social i want in it i kind of just want to focus in on that experience and you know the things that are social is like maybe watching with someone you know that that's been done before and so i think there might be some really interesting actually things on the ugc side okay uh especially with the emergence of like tick tock and whatnot um so let's let's go down that path okay cool so with that i think one interesting uh error that i might want to i want to dive into a little bit is on youtube i think that you know they're the world's biggest uh user generated platform so i think that you know it's probably worth uh looking there and finding some interesting use cases yep does it sound good to you yep sounds good to me cool so when i think about social i think you have to think of within the context of you know why youtube or these platforms wanted to do this right and i think probably the the mission and they forget exactly what youtube's mission is but i would imagine it's around you know providing you know useful engaging content and so i think the primary metric here or you know what how do we tie is like how do we use social as a way to keep people more engaged with the content uh on on youtube yeah um and so when we think about that then one of the key elements there is content what type of content exists on youtube and you know personally from my experience i think i use youtube for three different reasons one is for entertainment you know the the jimmy kimmels you know re-watches the the other one would be around like news updates during the the presidential race you know that was a primary way in which i got all the highlights and i think the last thing that is emerging is this whole learning ecosystem that's on youtube right all these videos on you know whether it be math or cooking or dance videos you know i think those are all really interesting things yep i so you know i think those are the three kind of top use cases that i see people using youtube for and so the question then is what which of these use cases could really increase the value and engagement of sellers if there was a social aspect to it right i think that's kind of how i'm thinking about this this problem um so i guess you know before i dive in any any questions how does this sound so far i mean i i so i think youtube is an interesting place to start i think the when you talk about the different buckets of content on youtube completely agree those are those are pretty much the same type of things i use youtube for entertainment some educational videos some news um the last thing you mentioned i just want to you you mentioned when i think about increasing engagement you want to help this the sellers when you say sellers in this context oh i'm sorry intersellers i mean creators i mean i guess maybe another way to put it sorry i didn't mean creators i meant like which one of these use cases and that's actually a really good point that you point out there's basically two sides of a marketplace right on youtube there's the creators and then there's the viewers yeah um and i've been thinking a little bit more about you know given that this is a social feature and this is about youtube trying to drive overall engagement i would at least with this exercise probably focus a little bit more on the viewers like how do you make the vr experience more social and engaging because that's where you can get that massive lift of engagement um usually most marketplaces have this new 80 20 rule where you know 20 of the people generate 80 percent of content so you can imagine that you know the viewers are much bigger than the creators yeah yeah and so i i think that all sounds reasonable and i agree like if you're going for right an engagement lift focusing on on the viewers which is the vast majority of the audience on youtube that that seems logical to me yeah and so i think that where i was trying to get to and apologies if i wasn't clear is what which one of these use cases could benefit the most from having additional social features right is it social features and news is the social features and education is it social features and entertainment yeah and that's kind of where i was thinking about and so when i think about that i think that we can probably look and be like hey news is interesting but you know i don't know what you could really do to make you know the news experience more social i mean i think there's other platforms that do that better like twitter facebook for example um i think entertainment's an obvious one where you know you could have a share viewed experience or maybe you can interact with the creator although i think that you know there are other platforms that might do that better and i think youtube also has a live feature so that kind of already exists i think what's actually kind of interesting is this emerging trend of learning and how do you make learning more social and the reason why i think that's interesting is i think that there's uh some pauses with making the learning experience more social it can help increase the motivation to learn something i think when you're learning something by yourself versus learning in a group setting you often feel a little bit more motivated yeah you can actually engage and learn and have a quicker feedback loop in terms of you know how do you actually get to the outcome that you want which is why you're watching the video for example um and then three is to celebrate the success that you have when you actually accomplish something i think that you know if you were able to somehow do that you know the learning experience would be just so much better and i think that's why you know if i had to pick an area to dig a little bit deeper into is like how do we make the youtube learning experience more social okay that's interesting i think that seems there seems like there would be a lot of uh benefits of successfully launching something there like a lot of good yeah it could do in the world yeah so if we were to dig into that a little bit deeper i guess the question is like what's wrong with the learning experience now right on youtube and i think that there's a couple of areas that um i could think of you know the first is that there's so many videos on every single topic that i don't really know which is the best video that i should watch that is most relevant to me given who i am um and so i think if there's a way for me to better discover the most relevant learning videos um from that might be interesting okay i think the second thing would be when i'm watching the video it's a very like solo experience and you know i'm not able to get any feedback or understand if other people have similar questions and so it's a it's a very um you know not it's a very not social experience right now and i think the third thing is you know i don't have a lot of confidence necessarily when i watch the video that i will be able to get the outcome that whatever the video is showing me because i have no social evidence that it worked for other people and so you know that's also near where i think that that might be interesting as well interesting and then i think the the fourth thing might be you know i don't have a lot of when i think about the social there's not a lot of gamification in terms of motivating me like sometimes learning materials is not just one video right it's a series of videos and so i feel like sometimes i just watch the first one and it kind of loses interest it'd be interesting if there's a more of a gamification or like a way to continue to motivate me to finish an entire objective so the four problems that's the kind of period is one's like discovering the right content two is you know making sure it's a more engaging ex you know kind of engaging experience where i'm learning with other people the third one's having proof points and evidence that i can do this with uh that this video will actually you'll be all come to give me confidence and the fourth one is how do i you know continue sustain the motivation especially for videos that are multi-part and if i had to prioritize this i think you would think about it just like which ones which problems do you think uh you know happen most often and which ones have the biggest gap and and then finally which one's gonna you know really provide a lot of value in terms of yielding the outcome that you want and you know i think the first one is to be honest if i think about it technically that's what the algorithm should be doing trying to find the best content i thought maybe there's an idea where people could like vote but you know algorithms are probably gonna be more efficient yeah the second problem i'm watching together with other people i think that's just gonna be a really tough problem because you know you're relying on some type of synchronous people have to feel comfortable with like having a live video session these are strangers like i just don't know if it's really going to be that successful yeah i think the third one and the fourth one are interesting so the third one being you know how do i get more social proof points that this video will will actually work and then finally the fourth one around the gamification okay um i think between those two i probably go with the third one just because the gamification multi-part series is probably a subset of videos and so if i had to focus on one problem that had the most reach and impact and and could be compelling i'll probably focus on the third one which is how do we make it more social such that when i watch a video i feel and have confidence that you know i can yield a similar outcome um that the video is showing showing me does that sound like something that you can focus on you want to focus on using social to to drive a higher percentage of like the desired learning outcome from the video whether it's how to like right mistake or learn how to do an interview or something like that right and i think what's really interesting about that is like we're seeing uh this new wave of people just remixing videos of like dance videos on tik tok right where someone will come over the tutorial and then suddenly everyone is doing the same tutorial and then suddenly everyone feels like they can do it because like everyone under the sun is doing it and so i feel like you could have a similar impact yeah but for like youtube learning videos like cooking something for example yeah yeah yeah okay cool cool so um then the question is like how do we solve this like what are the different ways in which we would be able to do this and some interesting ideas um that come to mind is you know you have the probably the the simplest solutions like hey share your success so once you finish completing your video you know make a post maybe a little testimonial um and that can give me some confidence right because i you know when i go to the video maybe there would be like a gallery at the bottom that shows all the other people that complete this video and the success that they've had yeah i think another one that might be interesting would be if there was an easy way for us to have people that are comfortable sharing kind of their progress as they watch the video right so maybe they have a video that is taking snapshots of them throughout it and so as i'm watching it and i'm seeing the you know let's say gordon ramsay cooking you know there is this ability for me to see how other people are doing as well um and you know that might be interesting yeah i think you know a third thing might be that might be interesting is um if there was a way for me to see other people recreate the same video um and maybe create some shorter firm content some more of that tick tock like model right like the mimetic like hey i saw gordon ramsay doing this like here's here's me doing the same same thing right exactly exactly and if i want to go into more detail i can maybe link back to the gordon ramsay link as well yeah um and so i think what's interesting here is that it probably will enable a new set of creators and also keep me as if you're more engaged because it feels more authentic it feels like it's not just gordon ramsay this professional chef that's making this stuff it's like you know kenton made this amazing yosubi chicken with like basil and peppermint and stuff and i can do that too yeah so uh i think that that you know that's interesting to me as well and i'm trying to think if there's any other thing that's a little bit well a little bit wilder yeah i mean i think you know if you could get like i mean if you get like vr going somehow and like you know you're learning something other people are learning at the same time and you know you can you can see the actions but i think that's a little bit a little bit far out there so we'll just put that aside until until we get there so i think you know we have the you know very feasible solution which is simple post share uh we have one where we try to take snapshots so you can see the progress and i think the third one is like ability to remix content easily i think if i had to pick one where i feel like you know being a little bit more ambitious but also knowing that there's some proof points that this will succeed um and drive a lot of engagement you know i think the first one is just not super compelling i think the second one is was is interesting but if i were just to push my team a little bit more then again it probably depends on the time frame but let's say behind not six months let's say a year right because six months you know i probably would go with the second option but let's say we had with the year just to be a little fun with this i would go with the third option which is you know how do we make the content super easy to remix and you know enable other people to like see that very engaging content throughout youtube and it could be you know in multiple different formats it could be in short content it could be in like story like formats i know youtube recently looked into that as well so i think there's a lot of interesting um you know ways that this could go yeah um so so from here you know let me just quickly pause like any questions does that make sense if not if if so then i can kind of move on to like how we might build this yeah so i think i think it makes sense um i i think actually all three of those ideas were like pretty interesting i thought like the idea of like snapshots of like hey this is like the snapshot that kenton took of his own progress like three minutes into this video and like three minutes into the main video i can see that like kenton's uploaded this is like what is sous vide chicken looks like at this point it's kind of fun certainly from the recipe use case um i think that makes sense i think and maybe you're gonna get to this in the how would we build the third one which you've yeah prioritize is the thing that open question in my mind is how do you how do you sort of induce or encourage people to to like start taking this memetic behavior where they start actually like remixing or you know rehashing these videos yeah i think that's a there's a really interesting um perspective so i think you know you know even though we we started a little bit more on the viewer side as we went down this path i think right now we're going to focus on you know how is the creator how do we enable more creators um and again we're seeing this trend uh making it extremely easy for them to make content because they're not making original content they're just remix and so the question is like how do we one make it easy for them to do this um you know to you know ideally it's some type of mobile format because likely what they're going to be doing is they're probably going to be doing this on their phone um and then three you know how do we make sure that it's high quality right you know it's going to be ease of use accessibility and quality are probably the three things that are going to be in my mind um you know for for us to build something that makes sense and so let's start with the ease part of this problem how do we make this easy and i think the the way that we can make this easy for them is if we're able to basically take a video that let's say let's let's use the cooking example just because we've been kind of on that yeah where and this is gonna be uh you know we'll have to figure out what the best way to do this is but the outcome that you really want to get to is a world in which you can basically cut the video into a couple different sections based on you know you know maybe you can do some natural language processing so you know that you know the the cooking is going to be cut into these different steps and then you can cut the video into these four steps if that makes sense okay right and then once you do that then um uh the you know the creator that has now watched the creator the the viewer that has watched his videos like okay you know what i want to remix this video they've watched once they're like i want to remix this video they said remix we basically cut into these different four videos and then now you know as you're watching it they can basically use a front side camera and start recording them doing these each individual steps if that makes sense right and so they'd be like hey step one and gordon ramsay saying these things and maybe we can actually filter out the sound because you know the sounds coming from the youtube and just really focus on the uh the person and then they can basically just kind of recreate the video um as you're watching it if that really makes sense so it's almost like you're saving some time for them um and so that's the way that you make it super easy and then the second thing is mobile because it's on their mobile device you know and we're using the front side camera to grab to them i think the next part is uh it's going to be a little bit of the challenging part is like how do you make it high quality like how do you make it fun yeah and i think there's a couple of things that we need to do you know when i think about when content is high quality the video quality obviously has to be good so i'm hoping that they have a good phone i don't think there's much we can do if it's low resolution but i think the other thing is that you make a short and you make sure that you capture the most important parts of it um and then the second thing is that you add some type of effects so it could be like music to make it a little bit more fun and engaging i think the second thing is you add captions because now nowadays we'll have people actually when they watch videos they want they might not have the sound going so they just like also look at the videos is also a really good way to to engage people so um i think you know adding a little bit of music and then occasionally adding some captions as well um because then you can you know have this format show up in multiple different places within within youtube um and i'm trying to think whales might be interesting as well to include in terms of trying to improve the quality i think what i'm trying to stray away from is giving them too much editing control because i just think that they can go down this huge rabbit hole and what i'm trying to get to is for them to really be feel confident in producing this content as quickly as possible yeah i mean that's one of the things that that you know we'll have to experiment right like our do we feel confident enough to create the quality content and do we have to give them more editing controls probably you know we'll have to dig deeper into yeah sorry did you have a question yeah i mean i think the thing that i was thinking about as you were um describing the sort of process of like using your mobile sort of like cutting the the source video into segments and and then the the viewer is sort of filming themselves like kind of going through those different segments is you know like it almost feels like you're you're they're like creating the story like an instagram story like version of them doing the video so it's not like a video is 20 minutes um that they're trying to recreate a 20 minute video of them doing it yeah like the highlight reel of their attempt to do it right and actually i think the other really interesting too i just thought about is like if we know if you're kind of video on when gordon ramsay's cooking and then you're recording yourself you only really find is you have like a side by side view right we could cut the video into half so you can see it at the same time as i'm cooking it and gordon ramsay's cooking it you know what that looks like and maybe the viewing experience could be that too like i'm watching gordon ramsay and i can just like swipe on the right side and see all these other people doing the same thing uh and you know you know it would be really kind of fun in that way right and yeah people also remixing it that way yeah totally i do think i think that um that does sound fun like that that would be enjoyable i think yeah i mean it's ridiculous how often i've seen the same dance video but i'll watch it again because it's like someone slightly different that's doing it that has a slightly different take on it and um you know i think that this could offer that that type of opportunity yeah cool so i think we've talked roughly about you know what are the most important elements and and how we would actually go about you know solving solving that i guess you know did you want to go into more detail in terms of what success would look like and and and how we would actually roll it out or i think i think what would be good um sort of coming up on time here but maybe just like imagine you sort of walk like we get the the feature you were talking about which is like the story storification like remix of of these videos um just tell me a little bit about how you would think about measuring success and figuring out okay what's working versus what are we gonna have to iterate on in b2 yeah no definitely i think at the end we come back to the goal right which is how do we increase engagement for viewers on this learning content um and we recognize that you know the solution that we think or i think is going to be very compelling as you can help create these remix videos and so while the top line goal is going to be the year engagement i think the goal for this product is going to be you know what is the number of successful like quality videos that we can basically create remix right um and so i think the quality is really going to be important in this first step and so you know the things i'm going to track is how one um the quality build is gonna be the outcome but then obviously you know in terms of how do we think about iterating well we're gonna want to understand kind of the funnel like how many people discover this feature you know how many people decide to use this feature how many people actually you know actually complete using this feature and then ultimately what's quality quality uh you know i'm sure youtube would have some type of metric but it's probably some level of engagement where people you know stick and watch this video beyond a certain amount of time so let's say it's a minute or 30 seconds right this is the quality time and so ultimately where i'm trying to get to is like hey you know success for me is if we get to a point where um we we see x amount of of high quality videos coming from this on on a daily basis so x percentage of penetration and and having this quality quality video so i think that's kind of how it measures success initially and then from there we can iterate and figure out how do we actually you know scale this out got it okay cool um one last question for you if if you got this to work in the education space um you know we were sort of using this cooking example do you think it's scalable to other content areas we have on youtube and why or why not yeah i think that it would be anything where it's about replicating someone's actions he's going to be obviously scalable so that might be fixing a car that might be you know some woodworking you know all these types of instructions in the videos and then i think that you know with with entertainment i think it you know that's probably the next largest category on youtube if not the largest category youtube and i think there'd be some fun stuff around like mimicking and acting yeah other people's right and i i think i've also i mean that's a copy to talk they've done a lot of great things but i also see a lot of these videos where there's like this voice track and then you know someone just like mimics the reactions um between two characters and i feel like you could probably use something similar uh in youtube and and and extend to there as well yeah yep i think that um that sounds good and i i think entertainment is probably the logical next category news probably is a little tough and there's probably some sensitive issues around everyone rehashing right into the news right now um given sort of alternative facts and all that type of stuff but um this sounds like a fun feature yeah thank you cool

Channel: rocketblocks

Views: 17,810

Keywords: product management, pm interview, product sense, product design, mock pm interview, interview prep, pm interview prep, mock pm case interview, mock case interview

Id: vElDe8Y0GxE

Length: 26min 9sec (1569 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 21 2021