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)
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.”
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.