This is part of a mini-series illustrating how to think creatively for interviews. It is also a way to build your product sense instincts.

Instructions:

1. See a problem.

2. Identify the quick problem statement/goal

3. Identify a user to solve for

4. Come up with three solutions

What you should avoid:

1. Overthinking

2. Being too grounded in reality

3. Trying to follow the rules of the typical product interview

Now let’s dive in:

What is the problem: I am on the Board of my HOA, and the number of emails and texts that float around that I can’t keep up with is mindboggling. Sometimes I walk away for 5 minutes and come back to responses with different time stamps and people replying out of order without paying attention to others. Slack might solve it, but even then, if everyone types at the same time, this can be a problems as well.

Goal: Hel reduce reading time and increase effective response rate in group messages.

User: Person with multiple projects or communities and limited time

Three Solutions

1. Summarize Button: Master on email inbox and summarizes the most important messages noting where others are waiting on you for timely responses vs what can wait. This would trigger everytime you hit reload on your browser, maybe as a pop-up.

2. Advise Me: When opening the last/most recent message in a thread, click a button that says: Summarize and Advise. Provide a summary of the decisions and then advise a response to decided or open questions. Maybe a series of responses based on conservative or liberal responses with an option for not responding. You have three options and can select, edit or reject the response within the email.

3. Gmail Decision Tracker: Whenever a decision has been made but other elements remain in question, put at the top of each email a summary of closed and open questions. Maybe color code it so you can find the parts of the thread that relate to each of the respective open questions.

4. BONUS: Apply to individual emails or collectively on different threads.

5. Double Bonus: Learn relationships and personality traits and tailor the responses to the different individuals. For example, one member tends to overreact and needs lots of information to discourage emotional reactions to threads. It would be nice to learn over time what works and what doesn’t for stopping this behavior in my responses.

How many of you have faced a similar problem at work? What would you want?

Note on Creativity: This was meant to focus on the improvement challenge. This narrow a prompt give you practice focusing on subtle changes that are more realistic.

If you don’t use a SUP, try picking a sport you enjoy and come up with a problem and three solutions. Maybe it is golfing or running. Go for it.