CREATIVE Product Sense Mock Interview: How to Generate Creative Solutions!

hi everyone I'm Diana former pm at meta and stripe and today we have Austin who AC his meta interviews and now is a PM at meta so can you do a short intro about yourself sure um happy to I'm Austin I'm currently a new pm at meta working on cameras across all their XR portfolios um I used to work at Apple um in the vision product group as well as NCH which is a Google spin-off for the AR glasses and most recently also a startup working on AI and llm aspect as a product manager um

super excited to help and you know Diana here has helped me so much throughout uh my interview prep process I watch all her videos multiple times took lots of notes for each videos and yeah it really helped me a lot I have a tip at the end um to share but you know very excited to be here today Austin was a star a student taking notes religiously and he'll share his tips at the end using chat gbt to use those notes to teach him even more awesome so today we are gonna get into a product

design question great let's dive in so Austin your APM at Google Maps we're thinking about building a parking solution what might you build and why sounds good and um before we get started I'll ask some clarifying questions but I'm used to sharing my screen is that okay yeah sure of course may I take a moment just to type down my Approach so we can be aligned there and I'm I'm going to ask my clarifying questions yes great awesome so my Approach on a high level would just be you know making sure that I understand we

are on the same page what Google Maps is and also what we mean by parking solution then um I would love to just quickly address Google's sort of mode their strength if there's any opportunity for them um and then come up with a goal like right what is the benefit um of having a parking solution for Google for Google Maps then we can anchor our sort of following response to that um I'll go through the larger ecosystem supply and demand side talk about the user segments um and then go through you know prioritize them go

through the user Journey identify pain points and making sure that a solution address both the goals and the pain points how does that sound yeah that sounds great let's get into it awesome um so for clarifying questions um I just want to ask when we think about parking solution are we thinking about just improving sort of enhancing that Google maps apps with a parking solution or a parking Solution that's really blue sky sort of infrastructure changing uh for Google yeah no limitations for my side let your creativity run wild let's do focus on yeah what

the pain points might be and go from there makes sense um cool so let's let's make sure again we're on the same page for what Google Map is today um my understanding of Google Map like most people use it it's a versatile platform um that really empowers users to navigate um from point A to point B and also discover uh new places right when you're traveling and also engage with local business um seamlessly right if you people are giving reviews looking at ratings and seeing whether business is open or not um there's other really cool

features that allow a driver when they're driving to click hey I'm looking for a coffee shop or gas station or even I believe perhaps parking spots but usually they only show um certain like parking garage today yeah exactly um so hopefully we're aligned there as to what Google Maps is today yes awesome um in terms of you know Google's strength and Mission and so forth um for Google Map specifically um it has a lot of data and a lot of user base already today right it has a large user base we have the GPS locations

of all these locations um and um even business reviews as I said now Google has their own Mo recently focusing on AI LM and gen as well so all of this will merge together um as something that would make Google Maps stand out from competitors and speaking of competitors we of course get the Apple Maps um we have ways and so forth as a map competitor in terms of parking solution competitors um or people in the ecosystem there's apps like spot hero or I believe pay by phone where people can you know pay for their

spots or look for long-term parking Solutions thank you for sharing that cool so so let me uh spend maybe a moment just to type down the goals um of what we're trying to do today like why why is this beneficial for Google why is the parking spot solution something that Google want to look into right because as a product manager if this doesn't make sense maybe we don't want to get into the parking space um right so give me a moment please okay cool so for for for the goal um right ultimately parking solution is

one of many benefits uh of Google Maps right it increases its value its utility for users ultimately what we're trying to do um I believe is right we can increase the engagement for our users so they can spend more time there um making them want to use Google Maps more increase the user satisfaction at the same time because they're spending more time on it right we're Gathering more data to uh address you know our strength and our mode our differentiation of having more data to improve our gen long term um another really important point I

believe is um Google's highest revenue is It's ADS business right now we have more user data to understand where they're parking what sort of their behavior is and perhaps be able to Target ads better based on where they're going um and what they're doing in that parking U aspects um yeah and TI to monetization I think that also has its um benefit in making sure people are using the Google pay um aspects more and with payment right uh Google can better monetize from all types of users as well that's a good point okay awesome all

right let's keep going so next up I want to talk about uh the ecosystem before diving into the user SE segmentation um when I think of ecosystem for most questions I think about you know the supply and demand side as well as sometimes the middle player which in this case um is Google right Gathering data providing support um but from the supply side we have the on a high level parking space providers um and on the demand side sorry it's wrong demand side we have the drivers looking to park as as it is um usually

I would pick one side of the ecosystem and dive deep into user segmentation but I think for this sort of uh new feature it's important to consider both you need a help the ecosystem for this to work so let me go into uh user segmentation give me a quick moment to type it down so I can verbalize it better okay cool um so when I think about user segmentation I often think about maybe the behavior or motivation and one one good way to think about it is uh how frequent is this space uh being I

guess either addressed or used and that helps me create a mental model right like from the least frequent sort of users or or user segments to the most frequent user segments um and that help me brainstorm easily during interviews um on the supply side I'm thinking like the most common ones on the street is like the public street spots right so that's usually owned by governments um and and on the least more or less frequent side we have the private aspects right we have malls that only exist like maybe just one or two malls in

in a city um depending on City size so we have that and also private spots like parking lots that are owned by private owners or private businesses um the fourth one um I believe there's a lot of them but it's a spot owners where um I own for example a apartment condo um and I own a spots in a parking lot right that's that's another opportunity um for as as a parking space providers um in that space we can also think about maybe a plaza that has like a restaurants and then the restaurants extra SP

extra spots there right um that can also be an Avenue for the restaurant to provide parking spots for people interesting these are all the supply sides so on the demand side we have drivers looking to park um there's on the high urgency side where people are looking for um a spots for a short term um let's say when they're going on a last minute dinner date or looking to shop or looking to uh meet a client immediately then we have on the other side like super long-term parking where I know be uh ahead of time

that I'm switching to a new job and there's not much parking space I need a long-term parking solution there and then in the middle um it could be someone like me who's a renter looking for a long-term parking spots um for one year or two year um because the apartment complex or wherever I'm renting doesn't have doesn't provide a prking spot that's I'm thinking about a demand side which would you prioritize that's a good question um yes um before prioritizing I want to write out sort of the criteria that I use to prioritize um I

would anchor on reach you know sort of that market size uh frequency of use and um underserved population but in this case we wouldn't call parking space providers population maybe just underserved uh users um in interest of time I you know during the interview I wouldn't uh create like a table it takes a little bit of time so here I'll just like quickly type type the ranking next to them okay sure yeah take a second yeah thank you something I just want to quickly elaborate um is that we again we need a healthy ecosystem for

this to work because if you have a healthy amount of Supply then the demand side can find your parking spots right but if you don't then we we still reach this uh sort of economical problem of finding a spot and that doesn't serve uh Google Maps at all so want make sure that uh we address both sides and oftentimes we want to jump start sort of that supply side to make sure that um people looking for a spots can actually find a spots that's why I might put a little bit more focus on the supply

side as well okay that makes sense cool um let me explain bit in interest of time I would just focus on the ones that I uh rank highly and then if you have more questions we can I can help justify the other ones as well okay for so for the parking space providers um I highlighted uh spot owners um because um you know compared to public Street parkings right they they have fewer um reach but still decent amount um that's not addressed today which is uh where I rank as extra large you know there are

undisturbed I don't believe there's existing solutions for spot owners to broadcast or advertise your spots um in terms of frequency of use what what I mean is that how um frequent is the spot available um and for spot owners maybe like again like a apartment complex condo owner or a business owner their spots are not always taken right maybe they go out on a vacation maybe they go out um working or they're just extra spots laying there so I would say like it's not the largest it's not the smallest as medium um so that's why

I'm highlighting this um on the demand side right um I think the highest most obvious one is short-term parking people who are um constantly there's a lot of people so the reach is high who are looking for last minute Parking Solutions um and then frequency views is high too um I think even within the night if you're driving you could be um looking for a parking spot twice if you're going from point A to point B and point B to point c um lastly um the reason why I rank them as under service user as

medium is because um today people are still able to find parking spots with um you know I believe there are existing apps that show like General parking availability um I believe like even on the payments that we have to pay by phone as an app to uh address that so um that's a medium there and I'm curious between spot owners and government back to the supply we are seeing large and large for region frequency of use yeah so I guess why did we priortize number four over number one was the main yeah that's a hard

one um so frankly yes it has high reach it has high frequency of views today um on a public spots perspective but I think the thing to highlight is that um right again it has it's it's this base is already sort of um over served that's why it's put put as s right um that people can easily find the spots out there and this is owned by government it's a little bit hard to um address that space I see and when you say it's already served I guess in that case people are still struggling to

find spots the government ones they are available right so I'm addressing of the supply side basically right um because um they don't have problem opening up a spot I guess uh oh I see lot of them there I see okay there's already a lot of existing out there okay let's keep going cool all right so after sort of prioritizing these two as I mentioned I would my focus on the supply side a little bit more to sort of jump start this um ecosystem so um I'm going to focus on the spot owners but also keep

the short-term Parkers in mind as I'm going through um so next up is uh user journey and paino um let me take a moment to uh think about that jot that down and uh demonstrate sort of that user journey and the pain points within that so um again even for user journey and pain points I also want to mention uh it's important to have the criterias down so we know what to prioritize um from a user P user Journey perspectiv um if we think about a spot owners um first of all usually they if if

if I'm a private spot owner it's like someone who owns a apartment complex with a parking spot usually I work maybe go on vacation um and then I noticed that I have um unutilized spots um sorry let me type this down utilize spots um and I'm not I might not be sure whether uh this is something I can monetize right so there's an awareness or uncertainty part and next up I want to be able to share and promote uh these empty spots um and also set up pricing because again there's a bunch of uncertainty in

terms of how this might work um if I were to be in an apartment complex there's also access issue right people need to enter their parking spot uh parking lot and um you know I want to make sure that I can monit monitor the space to make sure that the person parking is um you know isn't I guess trashing the the spot in an urban city or making sure that they are driving the car away um so when I return from my vacation or my job I have my spots ready um cool and then I

want to make sure that I can collect payment um right to monetize this that's why I'm do um incentivized to do this thing and then finally um collect reviews and make sure that just recurring Parker is coming back so this becomes a long um long-term Avenue of Revenue basically um this this also applies to um spots owners who let's say even own a business um because at the same time I want I want to make sure that these apply as well m um yeah I guess I'm curious for the first you Journey they leave from

work I think what what do you think would motivate people to be like aha I could monetize this extra spot trying to I think the motivation may be especially in the urban city area where like housing prices is high people are paying mortgage it's it's cool it's good to know that they have like another Avenue um of U sort of offsetting their mortgage for example and from a small business pers perspective um yeah I think from a business perspective they just want to increase Revenue right so this is another reason why you know they if

they have unutilized spots and they can monetize it there's there's motivation there that's a good point yeah when I was living in San Francisco I did have a garage didn't have a car so it was just empty there and knowing people are paying $500 per month for garage space yes absolutely and even if you have a car right um it's not always utilized um that empty spots if you're driving out during the day so fa cool all right so for the paino um when people are leaving for work right again they have as you mentioned

just now they have no idea that they can rent out a spot and get income so I think it's a high awareness thing um for them to understand that there's an Avenue for them to utilize the spot and monetize um and then the second thing is that um if they are aware already there's a desire to reach more people to again maximize that uh income Revenue potential um thirdly for in terms of pricing people aren't sure how much you charge right if you charge too much no one's going to come Park if you charge little

you're missing out um monetization opportunity um moving on to access and sort of monitoring I think there's a lot of trust issues here right you're in a apartment uh garage or you have your own parking spot that you own you don't want people again to go trash them or not leave the spot and um you don't want strangers that have strangers who um might have Mal intention to be uh you know doing harm to your property so there's some security and sort of access type of pain points there as well moving on um right in

without without a payment solution right how does one handle payment do you do like a private V moing do you exchange cash so there's uncertainty on how to handle the payment as well um finally right once this is set up you want to make sure that people come back again and again and um have to make sure that people love the Spots You're providing maybe it's a spot that's big enough for the type of cars they have for example so building that trust is important awesome so these are the pain points and I took some

time um to rank them and I just want to highlight the the few that I uh believe has sort of the higher highest pain point in terms of severity of pain and no existing solution today okay when you say severity of pain explain that to me a bit it's it's a little bit frankly subjective right it's like how painful it is for um these parking providers today I see okay got it um in terms of no existing solution um right that's the opportunity space where Google can come um address right if there's no existing solution

that means user satisfaction um user satisfaction isn't being addressed today okay okay so yeah these are the ones I highlighted um maybe justification why I highlighted them is again I guess for awareness people may or may not want to earn income but I would say like it's in the middle that's why it's a medium um right because if someone owns an apartment and they have enough money perhaps they don't care whether they have this small extra stream of income in terms of existing solution today I don't think there's any uh for private spot owners that's

why I rank medium and large for pay how to handle payment I think this payment side is a huge trust issue right when we talk about money so sity of paying is really high and if there's any existing solution yes you can have offline demoing zelling or cash exchange but um so there's some existing solution but it's not like they're the best so I rank a medium for example oh and I missed this one so uh I want to make sure I can get my spots back if I'm a spot owner I want make sure

I can come back have my spots ready for the next person um or have my own car uh be able to park there when it's available and this is like one of the highest pain and also there's no existing solution as well cool I guess that one is especially pretend for the short-term parking right right and that also addressed that um sort of demand side as well okay so what might we build and feel fre to some time on the solution side let me so before I brainstorm what I like to do normally is to

go back to our goals on the top so making sure Solutions uh address that goals as well as the pain points we just identified so let me take a moment type that down in a brainstorm okay Al righty so in terms of goals um Google wants to build a parking solution for urban parking spot owners and short-term parking Seekers to increase Google Map um utility value and engagement so here I'm addressing both the user side we prioritize as well as the goal we talk about up there and the pain to address um the three pains

we were addressing are the ones I highlighted which is awareness right letting people know that there's additional income stream um trust making sure that people trust that they can get their back uh parking spots back um for the next customers or for themselves to use and finally to handle payment right to make sure this transaction actually goes through and there's again trust in that um process okay clear so yeah the three solutions I came up with um I'll just go high level first before diving down um level is to utilize existing Google Map um for

the parking spots owners to indicate that there's a parking spots show them the setup flow right entering how many spots they have what the address is um how big maybe the XYZ dimension of the parking spots um and then on the demand side right we can have people switch The View when they're driving um off the Google Map to look for those spots and look at the pricing and making sure that both sides work um the details here is that how do we address um whether user can get their spots back or not so my

suggestion here is to take pictures um for drivers and owners to show their spots or show that their cars are um has left the space um to make sure that we build a trust there and then they uh can address that payment aspects right we enter the credit card information or bank account information and then making sure that transaction happens ahead of time time H um the next one is heat map um this is just to show um you know what area has the highest supply and demand um to help match sort of uh drivers

seeking for parking spots and owners trying to rent out their spots um the idea here is also like over time we can build a um rating or trust profile for the spots uh owners sort of like those small mediumsized business or restaurants that they have like ratings and reviews and this allows us to better match um and also highlight areas where there's like highly trusted parking spots for the drivers um and finally I think you know Google has this mode and also um owning several Hardware in their ecosystem just Google Nets cameras I think we

can utilize the camera to capture empty spots and uh license plates to again address that trusting um and maybe Google has its own you know R&D Department that can think about some blue sky solution to create i c that maybe it's not a camera but can identify whether a car is there or not um even even more wild like a motorized platform in a garage that helps maximize empty space um provides endtoend payment when a driver is entering and also trust right because you we're man managing that motorized platforms within a parking uh garage for

example so the third solution I thought of is um you know utilizing Google's Hardware mode um Google has has their NES cameras has their iot products and I think for example the NES cameras can help um the spot owners address sort of the trust issue that we identify right we can now know whether a uh parking Parker basically are they driving their cars away have they parked their cars what is their license plate to increase that right if they're um trashing the spot or not leaving the spots we have the license plate we tied The

Parkers to the payment system now we can make sure that there's sort of a type of insurance making sure that they leave the spot they don't you would charge it more or provide a you know get a penalty basically to compensate the the supply side yeah I'm kidding yeah basically and then another little bit bigger idea is to just for Google to create a completely new hardware product um to help detect the car doesn't have to be like the nest cameras maybe it's um overpowered for its use case maybe we just need approxim sensor sensor

perhaps like a um NFC for people to pay on the spot if that's not tied to the Google pay system so yeah basically this is a hardware play solution um all of these three solutions right the way I would prioritize them is with the criteria of um just high level like impact and effort but in terms of impact I want to make sure that the impact is related to what our goal is which again is increase the utility or even engagement of Google maaps app and that's how I would do them um if if okay

I can take some time to like sort of rate criteria quickly yeah yeah so based on the crer of impact and effort and again impact is engagement or um value provided in terms of Parking Solutions um the one that I'm prioritizing is the Google Map uh parking indication solution sort of that um versus like heat map or Hardware play right for example Hardware play probably requires a lot of effort for us to rent our Hardware equipment or even build new hardware from the grown up um e map I think it's a small impact and small

effort because um in terms of effort right we already have a map out there we have the infrastructure uh for people to reviews and all we need to do is to show how populate how populate how popular it is for someone to indicate that they're renting out a car a parking spot or how popular it is for someone to be looking uh for a spot so the Heap solution is quite simple but and I I don't think the impact is as high as a sort of brand new Solutions as number one awesome so let's beef

up number one a bit more so I get on the driver side that seems pretty straightforward for the parking owner side what is the MVP for the user flow you're thinking how do we get started yeah um first of all it's I think we need to start maybe from a smaller region that's like a urban city maybe a localized solution versus like launching this around the world so let's take San Francisco for example maybe Google can well Google knows where the user is Right based on their Google Map uh data um if I know that

these people are based in San Francisco I can Target them and first have a notification showing that hey here's the beta um idea for you to potentially monetize is your spots if you have a parking spots if you're interested let's opt in right so we address that awareness issue sort of educating them through a first-time user experience how would they know who would to Target is it just all everyone in San Francisco um that's a good question I wonder okay so there's a few ideas right one is if if I'm a Avent Google user um

I have my Google home setup at home and it knows exactly my address and probably has as to whether this area has like parking spots or not based on whether maybe Google view if it's like a outdoor one or Google reviews of the apartment complex then they know there's a parking garage already so the data there Google would have more confidence in terms of who might be a parking spot owner okay now we don't have to go that route either we can just broadcast it to entire San Francisco and have people they want one time

or two two times a little bit of a user distraction but hey this is a new product we're not launching to the whole world yet okay okay so we have the awareness um part down once people opt in um the spot owner U might have need might need to go through a firsttime setup flow uh basically entering the XY dimension of their parking spot and also the Z height of let's say the maximum height the garage can take right that's important information for Parkers looking to park um how much they want to charge potentially or

even um right their their payment information like the bank account information so they can get paid and of course importantly when the spot might be available right um we can indicate like Monday to Friday the spot is always recurring available between 9 am to 5:00 p.m because the the owner drives out to work um and then if there's any sort of access criteria like whether they need a specific Cod to enter a parking garage be one thing too for my garage it uses a QR code so perhaps like we can scramble and generate a new

QR code every time um if that's the access need um and then once that's set up you can have drivers and drivers coming in to park their spots I think the important thing is to set up a process for them to show that hey the parking spot is uh being taken out by this car so Google can use Google Lens or have users upload those photos into this system for for this transaction to work um um yeah and then lastly it's just Google pay making sure that the payment system works H yeah I do think

here you to make it more automated the camera stuff you're talking about at the bottom probably needs to be incorporated because people having to take a photo of like what would they take a photo of them not being in the spot it's like okay it's free now so yeah how do you think about number one and three so in terms of MVP I think number one would be fine if you trust users to use their phone if it's the parking spot owner they use their phone to take a photo of the parking spot right to

show people hey this is a clean parking spot it's big enough for example um for the driver though they are uh maybe taking the photos for the first time of the car they're parking in that spot so it shows that I parked my car this is my parking uh this is my car driver license and perhaps when they leave this is a photo of what that spot looks like empty I guess so you're not damaging the spot right for example I see okay that's the MVP the hard rare play would be like over time um

right if we show that the MVP works then we can start renting out um either Nest cameras developing Hardware um to make this user experience better as you hear just now that user experience is a little bit iffy I see goes into sort of that dispute uh pipeline right that maybe Airbnb has for example and you you have the payment information so if there's any damage you can like again serve penalties on top of that a lot of these if you're talking about an apartment complex I would imagine there's cameras already installed so if there

is some disputes you can actually check through the tape and absolutely infrastructure awesome all right good work let's end it there good work so I want to talk through some of the strength and some of the opportunities in Austin's answer this is a great answer to this common question that's asked at top tech companies like Google Facebook so let's start with the strengths so one I think this really stood out the first thing was just a solution that you came up with was very novel it's taking in consideration the what do we call this economy

the sharing economy right but with parking sharing economy yeah this is pretty new right and that is applying that concept which I think is a really creative solution so was served well and his Solutions part he had a combination of this is the more practical one and then the last one with the hardware play is the more beefed up moonshot version so in a lot of these answers they want to see a PM can be able to think of both something that you can Implement quickly and those that are more longterm that could take three

to five years awesome job there the second big strength which I think inspired this idea that then when I've asked this question before people didn't come to was the user segments so identifying this extra one of spot owners was very unique that then LED Austin be able to get to the solution and the pain points that most people didn't get most people will stop at one two and three so I think this was another area where Austin stood out here all right let's talk about opportunities so also two opportunities I would pinpoint here in the

user Journey paino section so here he did a great job of calling out the user Journey here this is contentious but I usually say try to think of pain points that create pain versus needs so I would have loved to hear some of these needs like desire to reach more people as to how do I frame that in what's painful today what's the obstacle for example an example where he that well is I'm unsure how to charge so that sounds like a pain point so again not a deal breaker at all but something I would

have liked to see yes that's something I'm like struggle with um I believe and sometimes I think about it as in the past I think about it as psychological needs which is like the emotional needs and also functional needs but I realized if I can truly empathize with the pain then that you know helps us come up with better Solutions as well so yeah things s of a good point I always say at the end of the day if you feel the emotional pain and frustration is when you when it really clicks that oh now

I'm motivated to solve this and that's why we always talk about user empathy so the second opportunity area and the last one is around priorization itself so if we look at maybe the pain points area we have the different medium low so Austin did a great job of calling out the criteria you always want to call out the criteria first to show that you're data driven think thinker but maybe us walking us through why something was medium large because at the end of the day you really have to convince the interviewer on why there's no

existing Solution by providing some examples of subpar Solutions or that there really is none so in this case for example there actually was some competing Solutions here and maybe even if the interview doesn't know of it um I think the interviewer might jump in and this is where you might have to consider okay I've seen similar Solutions so I would say be careful in the prioritization portion in providing strong rationale and being open to be proven wrong and this is the area where most people uh where the interviewer interjects the most so I would practice

this section but overall great job and no surprise that Austin got the offer at meta Austin any last tips for the rest of the folks still striving to beat the interviews yes um two things lots of practice of course keep mocking um there's many platforms to do that you can mock with your friends and so forth and through this you can meet new people as well the second thing that really really helped me is watch through every single di y''s video type down the notes really just type down notes as detailed as possible and then

open chat gbt just use chat gbt prompted to say like this is what I'm trying to do I'm a product manager practic practicing for interview and dump into the notes section by sections and summarize seeing what you know logic di uses to go through her interviews with multiple of them it I I end up having a really good framework that guides me through so for each interview I just make sure that I go through that framework um and understand why Diana uses these framework uh for that is so impressed wait so you dumped in the

notes from the videos into chat GPT and then how did use it and then what do they it takes some time to prompt it back and forth um so for example I for a product sense um I could just I just want to focus on how do I use a segment better so you can just tell chbt like hey I want to practice segmenting user better here's the prompt here's how di uh segments the user and here's the why she segments these and you give multiple examples and now ask it to hey come with a

general structure on how I se how to how to segment users and how to think about that is a great tip you can build the Diana chat bot I thought about it but basically hey this cannot be done if there wasn't great initial data and that those came from your great uh YouTube videos a I'm so happy to hear that and again so huge congrats on getting the offer since then Austin has moved to San Francisco B so I hope you're enjoying the job as for others who are still like Austin mentioned lots of practice

watching lots of videos if you guys want to watch another video on product sense take a look at this video where we have another folk someone else that got an offer at meow going through product sense answering the question what would you build in the travel space all right and I'll see you guys later thank you Austin bye