Insights Drills
The Google Product Management interview uses the the term “insights” twice: (1) Product Design & Insights and (2) Strategic Insights. Candidates for Google interviews need to display insights in several different parts of the interview. The more senior a candidate, the more important it is to display the insights throughout the interview.
Just because other companies don’t include the word insights in their question types doesn’t mean they aren’t looking for them as well. The more senior you are, the more important it is that you display command of insights.
There are two key places to display insights:
The Strategic Setup: Clarifying questions into a quick overview of why the space in important or complex. This is often where one touches on user and technology trends.
User Segmentation: Empathizing with Users and properly segmenting them requires insights into how they think, recent innovations and shifts in behaviors.
Many of my clients struggle here and so I have them work on drills. There are two kinds of drills.
The Prompt: Follow the rule of three and tell me three insights you might expect about the space if you were the interviewer.
User Segmentation: How and why you group the way you do requires insights into user mindsets. So I have candidates drill users over and over moving away from demographic towards motivation and mindset.
Exercises
Try to work out an answer on your own before you continue reading.
The Prompt: The Blind
What are the three insights you think the interviewer is looking for with “Design a refrigerator for the blind?” (Aha Moments)
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Degree of Blindness: Fully, Partially or Color Blind, for example.
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Length of Blindness: How long have they been blind. Since birth. Yesterday.
Maybe a subpar subgroup, but still showing insight that not all blind people or related complexities are the same.
Permanence: For life, unknown but lasting months, temporary (think a few weeks after eye surgery)
People with more experience probably have a wealth of workarounds and so don’t assume they need help with everything that is novel to you about this prompt.
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Living Complexities: Live alone. Live with caretaker. Live with sighted people (think kids) who might not always be sensitive or knowledgable.
Notice the first two groups would need to worry less about people moving their things around the fridge. So is life.
The Prompt: TV Services of the Future
What are the three insights you think the interviewer is looking for with “Design the next generation of TV service.”
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Personalization - The younger you are, the more you have come to expect personalized service based on preference. We see it in TikTok & Netfix, the next verison of TV services will need to almost consider it table stakes.
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Immersive Experiences - With the popularity of AR & VR comes some expectations of immersive experiences. It might takeoff (as PCs did) in the office with WFH setups, but it will make its way into the main stream eventually.
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Interactive Content - Original attempts at interactive content from the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime Video may have failed but they might have just been too early. As a generation that has grown up watching and commenting on video games comes of age, there may be new opportunities to make interactive TV work.
User Segmentation: Blood Donations
What are three insightful ways of segmenting users for the following prompt: Design a solution to improve or increase blood donations.
Example 1: Motivation is Fear
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Recurring Donors - Not bothered by the process
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Ad Hoc Donors - Can overcome their fear when the call of duty arises
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Potential Donors - Fear stops them in their tracks. Think: Needles, Sight of blood, Getting near sick people
Example 2: Motivation is Sense of Duty
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Strong Sense of Duty - Driven by this without flinching
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Middle Ground - Sense of Duty - Feel some responsibility towards their community, maybe a touch of guilt
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Little Sense of Duty - Not driven by responsibility towards their community but might still donate
Example 2: Desire Influenced by Exposure
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Highly Motivated -Directly benefited from blood transfusion at one point
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Medium Motivation - One degree of seperation - family member or friend received blood in past
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Low Motivation - Exposure is theoretically, only exposure TV/Movies
