More and more candidates are coming to me because they are struggling with strategic setups and/or user segmentation for the Product Sense/Product Design cases. Time and again, the answer is “Narrow” your prompts.

Common Problems:

• Stating Stakeholders as Users

• Confusing the interviewer by calling narrowing segmenting

• Trying to list generic pain points because user segments are too broad

• Realizing you have to take a stand on a further divide only when you get to the pain points and then you jump without the interviewer understanding your logic.

Narrowing Tactics

• Cut anything broad into 2 to 3 buckets, pick 1

• Then often you can divide that one again

• Now you are at User Segmentation:

  • Jobs to Be Done

  • Motivation/Mission

An Example

Let’s use the prompt: Design Airbnb for pets. I am only going to focus on narrowing and segmentation, not the entire case.

Narrowing Approach:

• Level 1*: Luxury Spa vs. Boarding Replacement vs. Pet-Friendly Vacation Homes

• Level 2: Pet type (i.e. Dog, Cat, Hampster)

• Level 3: Pet Parent type (i.e. basics only, member of the family, pet on a pedestal)

• Level 4: JTBD Segments: Overnight emergency, Vacation, Travel a lot for work

*The clarifying questions might narrow this one or might just open a new can of worms you have to close.

Note: Narrowing on job to be done (JTBD), there will be some overlap between what would’ve been for different parent type, but there’s also gonna be things that are unique. You could stop at Level 3, but the situation will change things.

To sense check, think about the pain points, and how they will be different. At the most basic, overnight has time constraints, vacation required people who are more bought it and travel a lot for work requires consistent support.