How would you improve Google Maps?

First off, I’d like to outline my understanding of the product to make sure I fully understand all the important elements.  I understand that google maps has a few different use cases

• It provides maps of pretty much the entire world. The maps have various levels of detail, traditional street maps, satellite overlay, and terrain map. It also allows you to look around in 360 with google street view. 

• It allows people to navigate places, both on desktop as well as turn by turn navigation while travelling in a car, bike or walking. 

• It enables users to search for, discover and find places of interest. Whether that be a business, a restaurant, tourist attraction. Furthermore, it allows users to look at reviews and find out important information about those location like hours of operation. It also has various integrations, such as allowing you to make bookings at restaurants or hotels.  

So to summarize, it provides three things

• General mapping

• Navigation

• Discovery, information and interaction with points of interest. 

Does that sound right? 

Interviewer: Sure that sounds right. 

Great.  So, it’s clearly a very big product, and for the purpose of this exercise, I’d like to narrow it down to focus on just one area of the product.  I’d like to focus on improving the point of interest section. However, even within that part of the product that are a lot of different features, so I want to narrow it down even further. I’m going to focus on improving how people interact with the restaurant feature of google maps.  I want to focus on this part of the product for two reasons

1. It’s an area where there’s a lot of opportunity for improvement. A lot of potential upside in terms of functionality. 

2. Competitors currently hold a significant market share for restaurant-related searches and interactions. For example, Google is currently losing out on a lot of traffic and engagement to services like Yelp and Foursquare that they could capture with enhanced features on their own platform. This is a big missed opportunity for Google.    

Does that sound good? 

Interviewer: Sure, let’s do it!

Okay, great. Next, I’d like to focus on a metric to move through this.  I definitely think we should be focusing on engagement here. When I think through the main categories of metrics (acquisition, activation, engagement, and monetization), Google has already acquired and activated a huge portion of the market.  That is, almost everyone has looked at a restaurant on Google Maps at some point in their lives. However, a lot of people (perhaps even the majority of people) still go to products like Yelp, and Foursquare for restaurant discovery and reviews, they go to Opentable for reservations and places like Doordash and Postmates for delivery. They could be doing all of that on Google maps. Therefore I want to focus on increasing the engagement. Broadly, our goal is to increase the frequency that people engage with google maps. Specifically, I would measure this by looking at the number of monthly active users who make at least one search for restaurants on Google maps on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. I’d also want to increase the average number of searches per user on a monthly basis. 

I also find it helpful to focus product improvement efforts on a specific user group.  Broadly speaking, we can segment users in terms of how often they’re already using the restaurant features of google maps.  On the high end we have people that are already engaging with it really frequently, let’s call them ‘power users’. On the low end we have people that aren’t engaging with it at all. Let’s call them inactive users’. Then in the middle, we have people that are engaging with occasionally. Maybe they’ve played around with it a bit, but they’re not using it as their primary go-to for the types of searches and value that it can provide.  Let’s call them occasional users. I want to focus on increasing engagement among that middle segment. The occasional user of google’s reach data around points of interest.  

Does that sound good?

Interviewer: Sounds great. 

Great.  So next what I’d like to do is think about some pain points and problems that users are currently facing. Do you mind if I  take a minute or so to think of some? 

To start with, I’ve mapped out the user journey for someone going out to eat at a restaurant. It looks like this:

• Decide to go out for dinner

• Find an appropriate restaurant

• Coordinating with others. 

• Make a reservation (or recommending when to arrive if it’s walk-in only)

• Choose the best meal

• Eat

• Provide a review

• Share what they’ve eaten with others on social media

Now I’ll think about some pain points in that user journey. I’ll also prioritize them based on 1) impact to user 2) impact on engagement

User journey step	Pain point	Impact to user
Decide want to go out for dinner	Not applicable to this feature
Find an appropriate restaurant	Overwhelmed with choice. Can’t choose a restaurant. .	High (very common issue)
Coordinate with others	Difficult to coordinate with others in choosing a restaurant that everyone. Finding the right time, the right type of food, and the right location	Moderate (only an issue some of the time)
Make a reservation or get a table at a  walk-in restaurant	Don’t know when to show up to easily get a seat at walk-in (no reservation) restaurants	Moderate (only an issue for some restaurants some of the time)
Choose best items on menu	Can’t decide what food to order	High (very common issue)
Eat	Not applicable to this feature
Provide a review	Don’t know what review to write	Low (not that painful to the user. Bigger issue for the platform/restaurant)
Share what they’ve eaten on social media	Not sure what to write / difficult to take a good photo	Low (only an issue for small portion of users)

So based on this prioritization, I’m going to pick the following 2, which were rated as high impact on the user

• Being overwhelmed by choice when choosing a restaurant. 

• Deciding on what food to order.

Now I’m going to come up with some solutions for each of these pain points. Please give me a couple of minutes to come up with them

One of google’s competitive advantages and core competencies is in building algorithms that incorporate multiple data sources to rank order things by preference. That’s what search is all about.  So why not apply these to the user pain points we identified. 

Choosing a restaurant. 

1. Selection of top three restaurants you should try next based on prior selections and trending restaurants

2. Showing if your friend went to the restaurant and what they rated it as. 

3. Showing most popular restaurants in area in general

Deciding what dish to order

4. Suggest dishes based on prior dishes you’ve ordered and ratings by other people. For example, right now google maps shows you popular dishes, we could easily take this one step further and highlight 1-2 items and say “recommended for you”, and even put a match amount on it. 

5. Have people fill out a questionnaire where they answer a bunch of questions, and then get restaurant and dish recommendations based on that. You could even have email program and push notification if there’s a new restaurant or dish that has a strong match for your preferences. 

6. Show dishes your friends have ordered or rated highly and what they rated it as. 

7. Show most popular dishes at the restaurant. 

So I’ve identified 7 possible solutions. I’m immediately going to cross off a few here that I don’t think are worth.  Most popular dishes and most popular restaurants already feature I believe. So no point looking further there. Also, option 5 (have people fill out a questionnaire to identify preferences) is more an implementation detail of option 1 and 4 (recommend top restaurants and dishes), so I’ll merge this into those solutions.

So that leaves me with 5 solutions that I’ll rate on two dimensions: 1) impact on engagement and 2) level of effort to build

Solution	Impact on engagement	Effort to build
Show top three restaurants you should try next based on prior selections and trending restaurants.   In terms of the interface, I’m envisioning a card at the top of the restaurants tab showing the top three restaurants, and a match rate, similar to what Netflix does when showing match rate for shows.   As for the data, we already have trending restaurants based on geolocation data, number of ratings, and number of views of the listings. We can use the same framework for inferring that an individual has visited a certain restaurant, and also use ratings when they’re made by the user.  As mentioned, we can also have the user will out a profile/questionnaire to indicate their preferences, and then rank score restaurant match based on that.	High because this directly addresses a top problem	Medium. Have all the data already (or can infer), but need to make new algorithm
Showing if your friend went to the restaurant and what they rated it as.    I envision that this would be something similar to how facebook shows when a friend likes a post or page.	Medium Relies on people friend’s and is not going to necessarily tell people what they specifically like.	Medium Problem is that it relies on friends to actually rate the restaurants, and that will may take a long time to get sufficient data
Suggest top 1-2 dishes to order at a restaurant based on prior food you’ve ordered, and ratings by other people. For example, right now google maps shows you popular dishes, we could easily take this one step further and highlight 1-2 items and say “recommended for you”, and even put a match amount on it.   As mentioned, we can also have the user fill out a profile/questionnaire to indicate their preferences, and then rank score dish/menu item match based on that .	High Would be a very helpful and often used feature if built	High It relies on users and others to enter what they ate. Google has a way of getting a sense of popular dishes for the general public based on reviews and uploaded photos, but difficult to do for an individual if they’re not doing reviews or photo uploads themselves.
Show dishes your friends have ordered or rated highly and what they rated it as   I envision that this would be something similar to how facebook shows when a friend likes a post or page on facebook.	Medium. Not going to necessarily tell people what they specifically like.	Medium Relies on setting up a way to rate/like specific dishes, which could be difficult.  But once have that data, it would be relatively simple to implement.

So based on the prioritization, I would choose to focus first on showing people the top three restaurants to try, because it had high impact and medium effort to build. As part of this solution, we can also implement the questionnaire/profile to determine people’s preferences for restaurants and food. 

Finally, I want to look at how I would measure success post-launch.  I would look at 

1. Total number of restaurant searches per month

2. The median number of restaurant searches per active user per month.  

Both of these would give me an idea for whether this feature is driving engagement. 

So to summarize the full exercise:

• I’d focus on improving engagement within the restaurant feature of google maps. 

• I identified two major pain points: 1) Being overwhelmed by choice when choosing a restaurant and 2) deciding what food to order.

• I identified 6 solutions, and narrowed it down to one: Building out an algorithm to match restaurants to user’s preferences, and then displaying the top 3 recommended restaurants.

• I would measure success by looking at two metrics: 1) Total number of restaurant searches per month 2) Median number of restaurant searches per active user per month

To answer this question, first I would like to select a particular user group to build this feature with. One of the groups that use the Google Maps app are people that are deriving to new places with their cars. One of the challenges they face after they get to their destination is they need to find a parking place to park their cars. This is a big problem because they usually end up driving around the destination for a while to find a parking spot that’s affordable and is close to the destination. Currently, they have to visit every single parking lot with their car to evaluate location and pricing before making a decision. This is a big problem and costs the user a lot of time and money.

Google Maps can enable a new search function (call it “find paid parking”) that searches for paid parking lots around the destination and provides list of parking locations along with pricing for each unit. This helps users find more affordable parking and find parking faster.

One of the questions that the Google interviewer might ask would be: “how do you think Google can obtain info regarding location of the parking lots and their pricing.” My answer would be “Google can enable business owners to add their parking lots to google maps and also allow users to report existence of a Parking Map”. In addition, Google can use AI / image recognition and leverage Google Street View to determine location of parking lots in each neighbourhood. To determine pricing, google can leverage Android Pay data to get estimate on the cost of the parking lot and present ranges. Users / businesses / AI from Google Street View can also provide data around the actual price of parking in each parking lot.

In addition, if a parking lot’s price varies frequently and is difficult to predict, Google can explain to the client that the price by this location changes depending on the occasion and is not accurately predictable.

I am assuming, objective of improving Google Maps is to increase user engagement.

To do so, there are a couple of things that we can look at:

1. Improve user interface
2. Add a new feature

I would like to discuss adding a new feature unless you want to discuss improving UI

One feature that I believe would increase unser engagement is having google maps for indoors for malls.

Let's first discuss why I think this is important than we will discuss the feature in detail

WHY:

It's daunting for mall visitors to find the store they are looking for because of the huge size of mall and new store constantly opening

 

WHAT:

For indoor maps to work I can think of following feature in the priority order:

1. collecting mall's information
2. updating google maps app
3. updating in-mall directory
4. Moonshot - smart notifications

Approach to the product improvement question 

1. Describe your understanding of the product, features, users and business model of the company (revenue generation) 

2. Clarify with interviewer whether he has any expectation on

• Any Specific Pain Point to address

or

• Is it to improve an existing feature
• Add a new feature to improve the product overall
• Improve a platform (Web/Mobile)
• Improve a particular segment of Users?
• Improve a company goal: Brand, Revenue, User Aquisition, Traffic

• State what you see as the BIG pain point 

3. Identify the use case to BIG PAIN POINTS or which have BIG IMPACT

• Usecase
• Solution
• Value to the customer (High/medium/low)
• Development/deployment Complexity (High/Medium/Low)

4. Prioritise the Usecase/Solution 

5. Explain how to measure the success criteria related to the feature you described

6. Wrap Up - Impact to the Goal, Alternate Solutions, Self-Assessment - Problems with existing solutions

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Describe your understanding of the product, features and the users

Google Map helps users

1.  Suggests an optimal route to move from Point A to Point B using various transportations.

2. Helps in searching various point of interests with ratings and location address

3. Automatic Re-Routing and alternative route suggetions

4. Rate a place 

The Company generate revenue via - Advertisement on their platform 

The Main user segments are - General commuters, Travellers (Tourist, Business travellers), General users searching for Bricks and Motors, private vehicle owners, Bikers, people using ride-sharing Apps etc

Main Pain Point I see is for Traveller who visit new places or countries they have issues related to

1. Clear Guidance in terms of places to visit (Historical, Shopping malls, Pubs, Restaurants)
2. Language - Communication
3. Clear Guidance in terms of places to visit

The Solution 

Usecase & Solutions - Google Smart Guide for travellers

Usecase	Solution	Value To Customer	Complexity
List top Locations to visit (Based on User Behaviour)	When the user selects to generate "Guide Button" Google Maps Generate a list of places to visit based on user ranking under various segments (Place to visits, Pubs, Restaurants, etc)	Medium	Low
Intelligent Itinerary	Once User selects the prefered place to visit in each segment, it consolidates and automatically generates an itinerary connecting various places and approximate time at each places and the medium of transport between them. Multiple options are provided to the user and the user can cancel or add places, which results in re-creating another optimal itinerary. Itinerary can be modified based on available time.	Medium	Medium
One-Stop payment guide Tour	Intelligent Itinerary can also have complete transportation assigned, by linking with prominent cab services like Uber or reliable government service, with a single booking (includes transportation and tickets to site seeing). Itinerary can be modified based on users budget allocation.	High	High

Now Google becomes the local guide, the interaction of the user is more with google maps rather than a local person, this eliminates the communication problem due to different language.

Feature development prioritization 

The priority will be as per the above table, as the first two needs to be developed before the last point to be achieved, so I start from the first item.

To get user attention: whenever google sense you have travelled abroad/ or far away distance and opens google maps, a Pop-Up nudge is presented of the new features with the top list of places and restaurants to visit during the time he is in. (Google can also use the date, place and time by the flight travel itinerary and plan an itinerary which spans few hours to few days)

Success Criteria: (specific to the feature you are suggesting)

 

 

ME- I think GMaps has a high market share, so I can think Engagement and User experience would be the business goals to improve. Do you want to me consider any other goals that you have in mind?

Interviewer- No, Go ahead.

Me- We have defined the business goal, Now we will define the sucess metrics so that whatever I suggest as improvement Idea, we can tie back to the metric that we defined.

Success metrics- Company level goal- #active user in GMAPs Product Health level- #average time spend #frequency of use #HMD(how my driving- product rating basically)

Customer Segments: I think Google Maps used by 3 major segments that I can think of-

1) Drivers(commute) 2)Package delivery system 3)Travelers/Influencers

I think Drivers and Package delivery system typically use a well known route almost 80% og their time and aware of the city that they are working. So I think i would like to focus on "Travelers" for this exercise. Also because, 90% of the time travelers visiting a place they havn't before and are very much dependent on Gmaps, improving the user experience will drive more engagegment and will be reflect that in our success metrics.

Interviewer: Sounds Good.

Lets deep dive into personas a little bit to understand the ppainpoints:

John Smith: a WW traveler and blogger, spends a lot of time doing permutation and combination to plan day to day in each city to optimize hours, money spend and cover more things when in a city

Ji yong: is a consultant and travels due to work which ends at 4pm, so have time to check out places in a new city, is foodie, and always asks local people for food recommendation but language is a barrier many a times

Sholanki: is a fashion insta blogger, wants to know all the fashion relevant local boutiques while traveling from point a to point b in a new city.

Shokla: is a student in History Major, loves exploring historical places and excursions but doesnt like prefer tour guides as they are expensive

Summarizing the painpoints: 1)Time spend on generating city based itinerary 2)Heavily depedent on local people and search to find local food joints 3)Wants to get recommendation on shopping, food, attrction location 4) Tour guides are expenisve  

Recommended Features:

1) Generate City based itinerary: giving ability to user to put input variables such as budget, hours number of places to willing to visit in a city and gmaps recommends day to day activity itinerary ex: I will put 100$ and say 5 hours and say 3 places want to visit and eat 2 times: Gmaps will generate 1-3 itinenaries for that day.

2)Recommendation: It has two parts of 1)settings (ability to set preference on what kind of recommendation will you prefer 2) push notification- based on your setting Gmaps will tell you ex:" I have 3 local restaurants near 0.5 miles which serves sushi, do you want to see the list?"

3)Self Service Tour Guide: If you reached any old destination, pressing "Listen" button will help you listen google guided tours on that particular place.

So summarizing so far, I started with business goal and sucess metrics and defining customer segments, painpoints, and recommendation of features to improve the Gmaps. But before closing I want to prioirtize my recommendation to get a sense of what should we build next.

My scoring is I will assign a score for Dev work and Impact sizing. the more the dev work, less the score and and high the impact, high score.

(Note: I will explain why I think how much dev work is needed for each)

Prioritization:

#Feature 1) Dev work: High, (score-4) Impact: High (9); Total score=13

#Featrue 2) Dev work: Medium (Score-5) and Impact; High(9) Total score= 14

#Feature 3)Dev work: Medium (Score-5) and Impact: Medium (7)= 12

So I would prioritize the 1) 2) in this quarter and next and #3 probabaly will be in backlog and prioritze when 1,2 are delivered.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Google maps is used by people to get from point A to point B. Users include people walking, driving, biking, using public transit, and taking a lyft/uber. these users use google maps to also check hours of operations of a store, check gas prices of nearby gas stations, and to get the best route given driving conditions.
If I wanted to improve usage for users on the go, meaning users who are using google maps on their mobile, then I’d look at improving engagement of mobile users. Let’s say I’m focusing on improving engagement of biking users.

Bikers don’t like biking in areas crowded with people, they don’t like biking up steep hills, narrow roads are a little more dangerous, and they generally prefer biking in a bike lane. Not everyone owns a bike. Not everyone is an expert biker, some people feel more nervous biking than others.

Some suggestions that could alleviate these pain points include:

A) Indicating to customers which routes would be the least to the most amount of effort (based on time and elevation gain/loss variability)
B) Provide the user the option to stay on bike lanes as much as possible, or opt out!
C) provide the users the option to see which roads are the most crowded, and have the option to avoid those.
D) when users start route, allow them to quickly see the nearest bike station if the user needs to rent a bike (little bubble on the top right)

Which solution is most viable? Well option A) would impact user experience, and for users who’s main mean of transportation is biking would most likely use this option more (san francisco hills!), implementation would require some work, but elevation information is something google maps already has and could leverage. B) Should be relatively easy to implement (and may already be), but in teams of value to the customer, may be limited value add. C) would be a little harder to implement, and would require data from people actively using google maps to get around walking/driving in order to populate that data, but would bring a lot of value to the customer. D) This would be easy to implement and would just leverage already existing data. In terms of value, it would just reduce the amount of time the user spends switching from driving/walking mode to search for a bike station to bike mode, to just having it all happen in the same trip.

Based on this general analysis, I’d go with option A first, and to measure engagement, we can look at how often that feature is being used, if they’re used by the same people, and how long users spend looking at the route options before starting route, how many users don’t start a route using the feature and switch to a different mode of transportation, are there any seasonal trends, etc…

The other answers to this question are very interesting, but I'd like to focus on the following nuance: I believe what works better in a product sense interview is not identifying 5 pain points, then coming up with 5 solutions (one for each pain point) and then just prioritizing the solutions. That's a bit lazy and frankly too easy. Instead, I think it's better to prioritize the pain points, choose the top one and come up with a more sophisticated solution that would consist of multiple features. Then prioritize these features into MVP, phase 2, etc.

So my take on the question - based on the segments identified before - commuters, bikers, tourists, etc:

Let's say we decide to focus on travellers (tourists), because the tourism industry is huge, a big number of people are travelling and there's not many products out there that accomodate this segment's unique pain points.

Pain points (besides the obvious ones of finding the way from point A to point B) - keeping in mind a journey that goes something like this: arrive at the destination, get to the hotel, go sightseeing at point A, go sightseeing at point B, get back to hotel, repeat a few times, back to airport.

1. Identify the optimal way of transportation from the airport to the hotel when arriving to a new place.
2. Learn more about the surroundings while getting from A to B
3. Optimal route across the city to cover the most interesting places, with dining options (day planner)
4. Find best shopping places that are mostly used by locals

Pain points prio

Based on reach and impact significance, I'd say:

#1 is low/low - many people work this out prior to the trip.

#2 is high/med - every single trip (even including the one from airport to hotel) represents an opportunity to learn about the local surroundings. Not hugely significant, since many times people are more interested in learning about A and B, not about stuff in between.

#3 is med/med - sometimes people either know exactly where they want to go, or they want to randomly hang out in the city and discover unexpected gems themselves.

#4 med/low - shopping tourist is already a limited set of people, and significance of the shopping places being local secrets doesn't seem high.

 

Solutions

Focusing on pain point #2, my ultimate vision is a platform, where podcasters or just people with interesting stories about places they love can record their stories and submit them along with an address, to Google Maps. Following some kind of an approval process (initially it might be for each submission, then there might be a hierarchy of approved contributors that can have their submissions approved automatically, etc), these stories would be attached to the places and played back to users who chose to learn more about the places along their route. There might be multiple stories about the same place, so the engine would need to keep track of which stories has already been told to which users, to make sure it's fresh every time they pass by the place. There's also a monetization potential by including local stores and restaurants which would be able to promote their merch or menu in real time, to users who are already close by.

There's a lot to unpack here, so I'd build this product in multiple phases:

MVP: connect multiple content-rich platforms to Google Maps with an API (e.g. pull info from wikipedia) and use text-to-speech tech in order to read relevant info on the fly. Request feedback at the end of a trip.

Success criteria: % of users who where suggested this feature and used it + % of positive feedbacks (at certain thresholds).

If successful, move to the next phase:

Phase2: build a platform for recording and storing the stories (perhaps possible to leverage Google Podcasts) and connect the submitted podcasts instead of the wikipedia API (or on top of it, for larger coverage). Success criteria: this time we need to lure in the content creators, so on top of the consumer-side usage metrics from phase1, we'll also have # of content creators joining/week, # of stories created per creator per month. 

Phase3: monetization: open the platform up for local stores and restaurants. Also, creators should be incentivized by automatically adding pre-post roll ads of the type "this story was made possible by such and such".

Success criteria at this point is all of the above KPIs, plus #of local POCs that participate in the platform, # of deals total, $ per deal, CTR for such ads, # of people visiting the places (very straightforward to measure with this platform).

 

Now if the time permits, we can jump into wireframing.

Otherise - summarize.

How will you improve Google maps?

 

Describe the product: Maps is a product used to get from A-B. Also used to plan routes for pedestrians, bicyclists, public transportation taker etc. Also people use it to explore restaurants, stores, POCs, gas stations etc. 

 

Goal: Improve maps?

 

Clarification - Improve Gmaps, implies we want it to drive higher user engagement and better customer satisfaction.

 

Primary Success metrics: DAU

Secondary Success metrics:  MAU metrics, average time spent in the app, revenue. 

 

User → Key problems for the user segment → Prioritize problem area to focus on → Think of some solutions → MVP and other phases for solution

 

 

Key user segments: [Based on age]

 

Consumer:

1. Teenagers [13-19-year-old]

2. College Kids [19 - 22-year-old]

3. Professionals - [23 - 50 year old]

4. Baby boomers [50+-year-old]

Enterprise:

1. Apps like Uber, Lyft use Gmaps for navigating their customers

 

Choosing to focus on consumer professional since they are the largest in volume and making some change for them will have a major impact on the success metrics. 

 

Problems for this user segment:

1. Commute time to and from work

   1. Finding the optimal path to get there

      1. Carpooling, driving, or public transit

   2. Getting feedback about cops, redlight camera, etc on the way

   3. A deeper connection with car apps to find the optimal points for getting gas etc. 

   4. Suggested time to minimize traffic jams.

   5. Recommendations on when to leave work and home to get to meetings on time

 

2. Discovering restaurants, stores, etc. 

3. Gas station discovery

4. Planning self-guided tours for tourists 

5. Indoor navigation -- navigating inside airports, malls, etc. 

6. Planning weekend trips on trails etc 

   1. Offline maps - not sure how to hike after getting to a trail. 

7. Need to take eyes off the road to look at maps

8. Triangulation is a big issue in dense urban areas

 

In order to choose a problem, I want to focus on the most typical use case - which is solving commute.  Feature proposals

 

1. Set goals - Minimize time, minimize cost, maximize calories burned. With Fitbit acquisition, this can also contribute to important data. 

2. Contribute road signals - Similar to Waze - cops on the road, etc.  It’s very hard to contribute to it right now. 

3. Sync with the calendar app to understand when you need to reach the office and come up with a plan to meet your goals. Send recommendations to the user. 

4. Recommend when to leave work via email and pushes to inform them of their plan

 

In order to evaluate we want to measure against the following dimensions:

1. Impact on UX, engineering cost, impact on biz

 

Based on t-shirt sizing (not shown due to formatting) along with the above feature proposal my prioritized list of tasks is as following

 

1. Contribute road signals - Add voice-based commands to get users to contribute traffic jams, cops, crashes, etc. 

2. Sync with calendar app - May not have a wide impact since it is limited by G suite data and data sharing across apps. 

3. Optimize goals - May need data sharing across Fitbit and G  Maps. Will require greater user adoption. 

 

MVP:

1. Add integration with Google voice - OK google -  “Report police car”, “report traffic jam”. Etc. 

2. Go To Market: Inform users about this new feature vial email, push, in-app tutorials. Get voice permissions. 

3. Run an A/B test for a small fraction of users and measure the impact on key metrics. 

I would start by defining my understanding of Google Maps, asking clarifying questions and goals for improvement, brainstorming some user personas, selecting a user persona based on underserved needs, and finally thinking of solutions, the vision of the solution, the priority of features, and metrics. 

1) What is Google Maps? It's vision. Google maps helps in exploring the world with key focus on navigation guidelines. Vision: Explore and navigate the world in a single click.

2) Clarifying questions

Google maps is available on multiple platforms- desktop, mobile. Which platform is targeted for this improvement? I am picking mobile for now as maps is most used when you are on the go, and hand held devices are best for it.

Whats the goal for improvement? AAARRR. Awareness, Acquisition, Adoption, Engagement, Revenue, Retention or Referrals. 

Globally Google Maps has dominance and the majority of the world/internet users are aware and have used maps once. However, google maps is used mostly when someone has a location to go to and wants direction, so mainly 'point in time'. I would pick to improve engagement as a goal and make google maps indispensable when a user thinks about exploring the world.  

3) User personas

We can create mutually exclusive personas based on some parameters. A few I can think of: 

1)By number of people:

Individual travellers
Group travellers 

2) By distance

Short distance (their own area)
Inter city travellers
National travellers
International travelllers

3) By age and special needs

Teens
Middle aged
Elderly
Specially abled

4. By type of vehicle
Walkers
Scooter/bike owners
Cars
Public transport availers

I would pick the user personas' by distance' because the needs for exploring places varies massively for this kind of user persona. Also within this group, Google Maps already cater to needs of short distance or intercity travel, but the needs for intracity or inter-national travels are underserved. I would pick the user persona of "national travel and international travel" for this improvement case study. 

4) Journey/needs and priority

-  Understand the best places to visit and their optimum path/route for min time and maximum coverage

- Explore cheapest way to travel from location A to B in a new city/country

- Explore fastest way to travel from location A to B in a new city/country

- Get recommendations for best restaurants to visit 

- Ask locals for help in their native language when stuck anywhere enroute

- Share the route, recommendations with friends and track where the friends are on the route 

- Create a personal map/memory of all places the user has been to, so it can be cherished later

5) Solution and priority

Vision of the solution- help national and international travellers to explore the world and get access to best places to visit, in shortest time, or cheapest way. 

- Based on the areas the users are staying, Google Maps can recommend the top places to visit. And using the distance as the key criteria, suggest an optimum travel plan for nearby places. Users should be able to alter the suggested plan, add more stops or remove stops to customize the plan. 

- Google maps can recommend the cheapest way to travel on that route- by different mediums like walking, taking a cab, train ride, etc.

- Google maps can recommends the fastest way to travel on that route- by renting a cab, or renting a car

- Google maps can recommend best places to eat on that route, and use Google ratings, images and other user generated content to support it.

- Google maps can allow to share the custom itenerary with friends by shairng a link and show the friend's location on that shared link so groups can synchronise and travel to a place together. 

- Google maps can allow users to pin a location and mark that they were here, allow users to add a personal label/tag to that, so that it can be reviewed later and cherished/shared with others.

Priority of the suggested solution/features:

Feature	Effort	Impact	Reach
- Based on the areas the users are staying, Google Maps can recommend the top places to visit. And using the distance as the key criteria, suggest an optimum travel plan for nearby places. Users should be able to alter the suggested plan, add more stops or remove stops to customize the plan.	M (Google  already has database for popular places and Google maps can use it's distance algo to create an optimum path)	H (most needed, most desired by users)	H (almost every person visting a new place is looking to optimize their time)
Google maps can recommend the fastest way to travel on that route- by renting a cab, or renting a car	H (needs information about various modes of transport for different global locations)	H (travellers with different preferences usually look for this info)	H (travellers with different preferences usually look for this info)
- Google maps can recommend the cheapest way to travel on that route- by different mediums like walking, taking a cab, train ride, etc.	H	H (travellers with different preferences usually look for this info)	H (travellers with different preferences usually look for this info)
Google maps can recommend best places to eat on that route, and use Google ratings, images and other user generated content to support it.	L (Google  already has database for popular restaurants)	H (Food is essential for any travel experience)	H (Food is essential for any travel experience)
Google maps can allow to share the custom itinerary with friends by sharing a link and show the friend's location on that shared link so groups can synchronize and travel to a place together	M	M (Only impacts people travelling solo and at times in groups)	M (Only impacts people travelling solo and at times in groups)
- Google maps can allow users to pin a location and mark that they were here, allow users to add a personal label/tag to that, so that it can be reviewed later and cherished/shared with other	L (already a capability used for a different purpose)	H	H

Picking the features where effort is low/medium and impact and reach is high.

Metrics

- Based on the areas the users are staying, Google Maps can recommend the top places to visit. And using the distance as the key criteria, suggest an optimum travel plan for nearby places. Users should be able to alter the suggested plan, add more stops or remove stops to customize the plan. 

- #users who have used/started recommended routes by Google Maps

#users who successfully completed recommended routes by Google Maps

#users who dropped out in the middle after starting recommended routes by Google Maps

#recommended routes used per user 

Google maps can recommend best places to eat on that route, and use Google ratings, images and other user generated content to support it.

- #users who accessed recommended food places

- #users who visited recommended food places

Google maps can allow users to pin a location and mark that they were here, allow users to add a personal label/tag to that, so that it can be reviewed later and cherished/shared with other

#users who pinned their location

#locations pinned per user

Hey @bijan

Let's describe Google Maps:

Google Maps helps people to find directions from point A to Point B. It also suggests multiple options(bus/train/Car/Walk/Bike) and multiple routes to get to the destination. Further, Google maps has a directory of businesses with their contact information, direction, User ratings and comments.  It is available globally on leading mobile devices and browsers (mobile and desktop).

 

What the mission of the product and what value it brings to the world?

Mission - Google's mission is to organize the world's information, so Maps mission could be organizing routes/path/directions of the physical world.

Value to the world:

1. It organizes the most up to date map of the whole world and allow users to search any designation in the world.
2. It gives turn by turn directions to help you reach your destination
3. It organizes the information about the businesses so that a user can engage with the business.

 

What is the objective of improving Google Maps?

1. Do we want to improve engagement on the app?

2. Do we wan to improve Revenue?
3. Do we want to acquire more active customers on the platform?
4. Do we want to improve overall customer experience  with directions or finding a place?

 

Today, Google maps optimizes for two things: a) it does a great job in finding a place/restaurant to visit, including all the reviews, photos, and details and b) it provides you directions to get to your destination . However, it doesn't do a great job in helping user organizing the places they want to visit maybe over the course of their trip or in next month.

 

I'd recommend we focus on user engagement on the app and help users to achieve more from using google maps.

 

The way I would structure my answer:

1. Think of different users groups
2. Evaluate their pain points with the current solution
3. Think of a few solutions to address the pain points
4. Define the success criteria
5. And if the time allows, we will discuss the launch plan.

 

What are the different User Groups?

Thing to remember here is that it looks like Google map in in two business: a) Yelp like app b) Maps & Directions

 

Advertisers: (out of scope since we are not focusing on the Revenue )

1. Restaurants that want to promote themselves
2. Local Advertisers
3. Big Brands

 

Supply Side:

1. Business owners (restaurants/ hotels/ B&B etc. )
2. Contractors who map the city and streets using their own car/device
3. Crowdsourced traffic information.
4. Reviewer who take time to review and post about every restaurant or place they visit. They also have following on the google maps app.

 

Demand Side:

1. Users who want to commute from point A t Point B
2. Locals who want to find a restaurant or business in their city.
3. Tourists who want to plan their organize their trips.

4. Family or a group of friends who want to plan their night out.

 

I would like to focus on 'Family or a group of friends who want to plan their night out" because:

1. I think the frequency of the problem is very high especially in the city where people socialize a lot.
2. I think today Google Maps is very single user oriented and it fails to solve for the need of a group planning to do a get together. Therefore, there is a huge impact if we solve problem for this segment.
3. Also, it's a person pain point.

 

Pain Points:

 

Customer Journey:

1. I am planning a night out with 4 of my friends.
2. I ask in the group text what do they want to do in the city tonight and at what time?
3. People respond with different options such as lets go to a wine bar or lets go to a cocktail bar on the text.
4. Due to the frequency of text, it's easy to miss suggestion from someone.
5. It also, takes a lot of back and fourth to figure out what type of bar/vibe we want.
6. Then someone makes a recommendation on the text and send a link to google map page or yelp page for that matter.
7. People look at the different options posted by others in the messages and then decide to pick a place. This takes a lot of effort - user also needs to switch back and forth between the messaging app and google maps.
8. Make a reservation.
   1. If the restaurant doesn't take reservation, then show up at the said time but we might not be able to find a spot for 4 people.
   2. If  restaurant takes the reservation but nothing is available, then re-do the search.
9. Different people take different modes of transportation (bus/walk/train/uber/bike) to get to the restaurant. People show up at different times which becomes an issue if you have a reservation and they need the party to be present.
10. You may not like the restaurant or want to go to another spot, then people start recommending other options in the neighborhood using google maps.

 

Summarize the pain points:

 

 

 

Based on the analysis above, I will pick the problem to be solved: "It takes too long to decide where we want to go. Process is arduous and have to go back and forth between apps (messages and Google Maps)"

 

 

Brainstorm Solutions:

 

1. What vibe you want to enjoy with your friends? When a user in the group doesn't have the exact bar in mind, A feature in Google maps can ask the user to enter their preferences (mood, type of drinks, neighborhood etc) and suggest top 3 restaurants that you can share with your group in the text messages. This will help you save some time to express your preference to the group and you will be able to provide your inputs.
2. Tonight's Poll. A feature where you can invite your friends (through Gmail ) to pick 1-3 bars each and take a poll among the group to figure out where to go. The poll results will be shared via email.
3. Night out Group: A feature with in Google maps where you can create a group which will be archived after the night. This is where the group will communicate to make the plans, exchange messages, and recommend restaurant. This will allow the group to communicate faster and share links to the restaurants without leaving the app.
4. Google Maps Will Suggest A bar: A feature where each user will fill out a google form (will take 1-2 mins) to enter preference (mood, style, Jazz/Classy/ drink type etc) and the google Maps will pick a bar and send the group a text message about the timing, reservation

 

Evaluate Solutions:

 

 

 

Recommendation: based on the above evaluation, Solution 2 and 4 are quick wins that can be launched in the short term. Based on the success of these solutions, I'd recommend that we should deep dive in solution 3 and build it in the long term.

 

For the sake of this exercise, I will pick solution 4 and define the user experience for it.

 

User Experience for Google Maps will suggest a bar.

1. One of the user of the group will go to google map and tab on the feature. Help Google Maps to suggest a bar.
2. Are you going with a group? Do you want to invite them?
3. You can invite the group to participate via text, and everyone will get a link to google Maps feature.
4. Once you click the click, the future will ask you quick 5 questions to figure out the preference.
5. Once user entered their preferences, Google maps will pick a bar based on everyone's input and suggest a spot.
6. If majority says no, then it will recommend the next bar on the list.
7. Once majority agrees to a bar, it will ask the leader whether you want to make a reservation?
8. If yes, then it will make a reservation for the party of X at Y time.

 

Success Criteria:

 

Primary metric:

1. Suggestion Success Rate: # of suggestions that led to group alignment / total number of suggestions provided.

 

Secondary metric:

1. Awareness: % of DAU that are aware of this feature
2. Activation:
   1. # of people who have at least used this feature once
   2. # of people who have at least responded to text (request by other users) link at least once
3. Engagement:
   1. Total number of users who have used this feature (Daily/Weekly/Monthly)
   2. Average number of sessions(host who started this feature for the group ) per user per month
   3. Total number of hosts (Daily/Monthly/Weekly)
   4. Total number of responders(Daily/Monthly/Weekly)
4. Retention:
   1. Number of users who used this feature used it again (Weekly and Monthly Retention)

 

Me: To start off, Google Maps is the most popular navigation product from Google. Though there are other products within that product, navigation remains to be the primary focus. It's also supported on different device types such as mobile and desktop/laptop computers. The product has many products within such as POI Search, Reviews, etc. Is there anything else about the Google Maps product that you would have expected to have also heard? 

Interviewer: no.

Me: Is there a certain aspect of product that we are trying to improve upon? 

I: No

Me: Also do we have a goal in mind such as increasing user usage or revenue or something else? 

I: No. 

Me: I would like to focus more on US consumers thought product is utilized by mostly across the globe? I am just more familiar with US market and assume that other markets there may be slight variations in terms of legality and how behavior patterns. 

I: Sure

Me: Also, since most people use Google Maps while being out an about vs. on a desktop or laptop, I would like to focus on mobile users. Is that ok? 

I: Sure.

Me: Amongst all the Google Maps products, I would like to focus on POIs but that's a bit broader so I would like to narrow that choice to Restaurants portion of it. Am I in alignment with what you might be ok with or wuold you like me to tweak the focus?

I: Yeah I am cool with your choice. 

Me: Ok..as I think of improvement, I would first like to think of what our business goal might be and who might be our user segments who can help achieve that Business Objective (BO). Then I would think of how that user segment uses the product which will help me think of their frustrations or needs. Having identified that, I would like to focus on solutioning to address 1or 2 needs of that user segement and then pick an MVP and talk briefly about how I can evaluate success. 

I: sounds good. Just let me know as you go through this. 

Me: As I think through this I think it's important to align with Google's mission to bring world's information together and add value to its customers. This is important since whatever I design should probably align to this mission of Google. Also, considering Google Maps is a mature stage product, it makes sense to focus on Retention vs. Adoption of net new customers. I also think that optimizing for Retention will in turn also help us drive Engagement. 

I: Makes sense

Me: Ok in terms of User Segments I think we can think of it as : 

1)Families who likely depend more on homecooked meal either because they have a kid or two or need to save more money or have limited time in general. It's just a different phase of life. Family to me is someone who is married at the least. 

2)Singles whose focus is less on cooking, partly from laziness, and more focused on social life, career progression, learning new skills, etc. 

3)Elderly who are planning for retirement and hence want to save more money than a family would but also are less flexible with different types of food / tastes just because they are more instilled in habit due to age. 

While these user segments may have some overlapping needs and is somewhat of a generalization, I do think that these segments do have some unique needs. 

As I think of this I want to focus on where I can provide most user impact and this can be thought of from perspective of what segment liekly uses Google Maps / Restaurant feature the most and what segment is influential. Influence can drive adoption as well. So it makes sense to focus on Singles. Am I tracking so far with you?

I: Sure

Me: So I think Singles eat out often and they also tend to meet many different people over food / drinks. Typically they also tend to check out reviews but they do depend on Yelp a lot for that. When it comes to organizing get together they tend to depend a lot on Whtsapp / SMS / Phone calls. The other thing that they do is scroll through various restaurants and read menus to see where they might want to eat. Also, Singles tend to be more flexible with thier choices since they likely have more time (no kid or family responsibilities) and assuming that most singles are younger they just have a higher drive for trying different things. 

So I think their needs are:

1) Easily coordinate place / venu for drinks / food

2) Hard to think of a place to eat

3) Don't know if I should trust reviews / recommendations so don't know if I will like the food and will it be worth my money?

Me: Are we good? Any questions?

I: you can proceed

Me: I will focus on #2 and #3 since I think coordinating a place to go eat at is an edge case compared to the other two. It does add value but still #2 and #3 adds more value to my user and will hence help enhance retention. any questions? If not, I will take few minutes to think of how to possibly address user needs?

I: Sure

Me: 2a) Personalized Finder: AI reinforcement logic can be implemented to keep track of type of places I go eat at. This can be used to recommend me places and probably even give me probability score of likeability. Maybe these places have 26-50% likeability, 50-75% likeability, etc. Different factors could be used to determine this such as: Season, weather (maybe during certain weather I tend to choose x type of place such as coffee instead of ice cream), time of the day (if I eat late lunch maybe eat at more heavy food), etc. 

2b) review based recommendaition: This could possibly be combined into 2a but I think a separate feature in itself is better to have. This is based on what place I reviewed to be high. There is a dependency here on user inputing data but I think this will also help drive retention metric for Review product and that will help drive overall adoption of Google Maps for Restaurants. So I still think it's worthwhile. 

3a) Social Network dependency: This product can suggest me what my friends have liked. This could be quite involved since we can implement this in various ways. One key thing is integration with FB and then maybe we can track what friends I communicate most with to identify based on which friend's restaurant visits recommendations should be provided to me. We could also use Google's expertize in machine learning and vision identification technology to look into which friends I tend to have more pictures with but that doesn't necessarily mean I like thier food choices. So that may not be a good aspect to depend on. There are aspects of possible privacy concerns but we can likely circumvent those by allowing person to share their interests or even allowing them to share their activities with certain friends of theirs. 

To pick an MVP I would like to evaluate based on user impact and what will likely help drive rentention. Also, I would like to think of complexity in implementation as well. Considering all that, let me take a min please. 

I: Sure

Me: I will MVP 2a considering that it's something that can easily be done and can quickly help us start adding value. WE depend on our own choices more than our friends and also depending on our own choices is logically soething you should we all do befoer starting to look at friends choices. + It helps give us time to think through legal aspects involved with some other features. 

Me: If we were to measure success we should think of did we retain users of this feature. That can be measured by % of users who used this feature once who ended up using it more than 10 times in a month. I say 10 times because peopole may use the feature couple times before not finding it helpful and I say a month because it gives us enough time to really get good frequency to see how much this feature is being used. 10 is an arbitrary number considering lack of data irght now but in real life would work with data scientist to see if we have any past data based on which I can come up with a more realistic number. 

Any questions? 

I: No I think we are good. Wouuld you like to help summarize for me? 

Me: YEah so I thouyght of focusing on US customers who use Google Restaurants feature more and thought of optimizing the product more for singles who likely are the most frequent and heavy users of Restaurant features. Since their needs are helping them find a newer place to eat at all the time and helping me figure out if it will be good inspite of good reveiws becuase maybe I don't trust those reviews. I choose to provide a minium feature to my user by providing them recommendations of what place I may like to go eat based on my activities. This will require us using AI reinforcement logic but does have a downside of ever changing user needs. So there is likelyhood, but a low one considering Google already has ton of location based data to depend on, especially in the beginning when we don't have enough user data and hence not optimized choices for the user. 

Interviewer: Great. Thank you very much. What questions do you have for Google? 

 

1. Describing the Product:

At its core, Google Maps allows users to find and navigate between geographical locations. As a platform, it provides rich features both for searching locations and navigations. 

For phyical locations - it provides contact information, opening hours, postal addresses, different type of maps, street views of surrounding areas - depnding upon the type of locations. 

Similarly, on the  navigation side, it offers features such as helpt to plan commute time and route, turn-by-turn directions, shows modes of transport available, and estimated costs (for public transport and ride-hailing services like Uber). 

Furthermore, as a platform, it allows other business to access these maps through API to build additional features and services for their customers.

2. Clarifying Scope and Focus

1. What is the business objective/focus of this improvement - broadly customer aquisition/retention, engagement or monitization?
2. Is this targeted towards any particular customer segment, region etc.
3. Is the improvement platform specific - web, mobile, OS? 
4. Are there contraints on time, to be considered for this imrovement? (often relevant in situations like regulatory complicance where all development work is hard-deadline driven)

3. List Customer Segements / User Groups 

• Difficulty in building a consolidated itinerary to stay on top of schedules and plan
• Difficulty in managing and tracking all reservations, daily itineraries, important documents like boarrding passes, tickets etc.
• Lack of guidance/information on finding hidden gems (sights, dining options, shopping options) to get the best out of the vacation time
• "Unknowns unknowns" about a places, routes which can lead to difficulties or safety conerns
• Optimize time and cost across multiple options of sights, accomodations, dining and commute options.

4. List of solutions/features to address above pain points/use cases5. Impact, Cost, and Prioritization 7. Measuing Success / Metrics

My response using CIRCLES method would be:

Comprehend (What is it?)

1. Google Maps- What does it do? - Google Maps allows its user to go from Place A to Place B and provides several options such as driving, walking, public transport, with an option to link ride sharing apps such as Uber and Lyft. User also uses Google Maps to search nearby places like restaurants, gas stations, events, landmarks, etc. 
2. Ask Clarifying Questions from the Interviewer:
   1. Is the goal to improve the entire application or a specific feature of Google Map?
   2. Is the improvement form factor specific - Laptop or Mobile? If mobile, Apple IOS or Android?
   3. What's the objective of improvement? - increease engagement, more revenue via ads or partneres who want to participate, acquisition of more customers, etc.

1. Once interviewer provides clarification to above question, I would start by first laying out the approach I am going to take to (a) start by understanding who is the user (persona) of Google Maps, (b) Pick one persona and identify their objectives or motivations of using Google Maps. (c) Then I will identify pain points (user needs) and suggest new features/ solutions to address those pain points and that could lead to stated objectives or business goals like better customer engagement, etc. (d) next, I will prioritize new features based on cost vs benefit vs difficulty to implment (e) Lastly I will summarize the overall analysis
2. Users of Google Maps
   1. Vehicle owners/drivers
   2. Bikers
   3. Commuters using public/private transport
   4. Walkers
   5. Tourists/Visitors
   6. People using ride sharing app like Uber, Lyft etc.

1. While traveling, they need gas and food- become very important with young kids who would have varying needs. Gas and food costs would vary and it is good to have options
2. Visting landmarks on the way to go- currently there is no mechanisms where the application notify you that a land mark is coming and it is about one hour and in a specific direction. Today, it is all manual process, you have to stop the car and look at where this place is and how long will it take to get there? And what impact it has on your overall journey
3. Make/reecive calls - Whethere is Android or IOS, every time you receive a call, the screen changes to phone optioons. After the call is done, you have to go back to maps. Quite painful, while driving, let alone in a place that you never visited. 

My approach would be to start by understanding Google Maps' motto, as it can impact your decisions along the way. I have especially found it useful whenever there is a conflict between two decisions. 

For now, I googled it and it is " Explore and navigate your world". 
For the interview, I would assume one or ask the interviewer for it. 
Personally, the word ‘explore’ shaped my approach to the problem. 

Then I would go for clarifying questions like if the interviewer wants to improve any specific metric or improve for any specific persona.
The metrics could be retention, no of users, monetization (Google Maps provides paid APIs and we can also find new ways for monetization), user satisfaction/ease of use, etc., 

For now, I would focus on satisfaction/solving pain points as I believe it has an impact on all the other metrics listed above. I am writing down my ideas for 4 user personas in this solution but in a real interview, the interviewer might pick one. I would also have more questions if we are looking at the B2B part of Google Maps as I am not a direct user and do not know the current experience. 

Coming to my persona I have brainstormed the following:

1. Cab/Auto Driver: 
Behavior: 

• Find the customer pick-and-drop location.
• Find the distance and time taken to reach the location.

Pain Points: 

• May lose signal while driving as he is going to an unknown location.
• He consumed more fuel as Google Maps are generally more optimized for time.
• Vehicle damage risk on pothole-ridden routes.
• He doesn't understand English

2. Daily Office Commuter: 
Behavior: 

• He uses Google Maps for office commute in the beginning few days.
• Travels to the same place around the same time every day.
• Has a usual route

Pain Points: 

• Unexpected traffic/diversion
• Hard to switch routed if there is a blockage
• Traveling long distances alone is boring/ doesn't feel productive
• Change in the weather mid-route

3. New to the city:

Behavior: 

• He uses Google Maps to go almost anywhere.
• Doesnt know much about the city.
• Wants to explore the city.

Pain Points: 

• Doesn't know how the roads are in the route like dusty, filled with potholes, etc ( can use a mask for dusty roads)
• Concerned about neighborhood/route safety
• Doesn't know where to go on weekends/holidays
• No knowledge on public transport timing and connectivity

4. Tourist: 

Behavior: 

• Wants to explore the best version of the city.
• Cover as many tourist places as possible.
• Enjoy the best food in the city.

Pain Points: 

• Needs a guide
• Cannot prioritize what places to visit as there is a limited time
• Wants a hotel well connected to his planned visits
• Wants a route that covers his checklist in the time which gives the best experience (eg. Sunrises on trek)
• No knowledge of public transport timing and connectivity

 

How would you improve Google Maps?

 

Clarifying Questions:

Does improving Google Maps mean, based on functionality, look and feel, or any particular goal improvement?

 

Engagement

 

Structure: First, i will explain the strategic context of the problem, then i will look at users and segments, next i will dig into the needs and pain points and pick a subset to address, Then will brainstorm and think of solutions and potentially pick one, Last but not least i will define how to measure success. 

 

Strategic context: 

Google’s Mission: To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. 

 

Google Maps is Google’s of initial product, which primarily provides navigation utility and also recommendation services. 

Current Google capabilities are 1—navigation (Get directions, Traffic notifications), 2. Explore a place 3. Share location 4. Get recommendations for places or interest

 

Goals of the product: Seamless experience for getting direction from A to B

 

Competitive landscape: Apple Maps, Waze, Custom navigation software eg Tesla

Recommendation service : Yelp , Facebook suggestions etc

 

Improve google map for better navigation and engage people to use the service.

 

Stakeholders:

Drivers, Traffic Regulators, Reviewers

 

SEGMENTATION:

1. Tourists, new to the city, wanted to explore the town 3,2,3

2. motorists who need directions from Point A to Point B 3,2,3

3. Bikers who need navigation for destination directions 2,2,3

4. Daily commuters to use multiple public transportation 3,2,2

5. Friends/Families on vacation wanted to navigate to a common destination 3,3,3

 

Prioritization Criteria:3 is the highest, and one is the lowest

Market size, underserved, alignment to goal

 

I am picked up the segment based on the above criteria Friends/ Families on vacation and wanted them to a common destination. 

I feel their market segment is high, and these groups are underserved from the standard navigation point of view because Google is looking for areas of improvement by looking at a particular niche, which will significantly improve the engagement of that specific niche. 

 

PAIN POINTS:

User Journey: Find a destination, Find transportation, accommodate people, Navigate and Sync, Enjoy the feeling of navigating together, capture beautiful moments, and share them with friends. 

 

1. Finding exciting places and creating a navigation list of people traveling together is difficult because of the time and interest of different people. 2,2

2. Finding transportation for a group of people traveling together can be difficult, and multiple people are needed to handle the booking due to the size limitation of each vehicle. 2,2

3. A group of people travelling in different vehicles becomes out-of-sync due to external factors like traffic, etc., which creates difficulty. 3,2

4. Friends / Families of larger miss the enjoyment of traveling together and the opportunity to capture beautiful moments together.3,3

5. It needs extra effort for the admin to sync the group during navigation, which creates difficulty in enjoying the trip. 3,3, 3

Criteria: 

The intensity of the need, Frequency, and ability to solve 

Admin to sync the group for navigation creates extra effort and misses the opportunity to enjoy the trip.

 

SOLUTIONS:

1. Trip Navigation Portal: The admin can create a list of places in the city to explore and invite members to access the navigation. This creates a shared navigation portal where the admin can locate the invitees and their current location during the trip on the map. 3,3,2

2. Auto Navigation Portal: To reduce the hassle of admin handling the trip navigation and sync, the auto navigator creates a video portal for each user and shows the current trip navigation It can view and communicate with people and locate the estimated time to reach the destination. Provide information on demand for the interested places in the video portal navigation.3,3,3

3. Google glasses: Create a seamless trip experience and navigation together for people travelling together to get a VR experience that they are travelling together 3,2,3

 

Criteria: How well it solves the Problem, Time to market Effort, and Differentiation against alternatives

 

Prioritizing Auto Navigation Portal: To reduce the hassle of admin handling the trip navigation and sync, the auto navigator creates a video portal for each user and shows the current trip navigation It can view and communicate with people and locate the estimated time to reach the destination. Provide information on demand for the interested places in the video portal navigation.3,3,3

 

Success metrics: 

Percentage of people engaging with video portal in a trip

Percentage of admins happiness index after the trip.

 

Let's start by defining the product "Google Maps".

Google Maps is a product that helps people to get from A to B by navigating them via their selected medium of transport (public transport, plane, car, cab, walking, bike).

Today, Google Maps has more functionalities than that: users can not only view the website, address and contact details of their target location, they also see ratings, opening hours, pictures and available services. If applicable, the user could even contact the location or book directly through Google.

Google Maps therefore shortens ways for its users, saves time and removes roadblocks and insecurity in any travel journey.

I am assuming the improvement will be directed at direct consumers and that it should point to Google's mission of making information accessible. I am also assuming that I have the budget and engineering resource I need to make the changes I am going to suggest.

I am assuming the goal of the improvement is to increase engagement by a significant percentage, say 20%.

The user group we are addressing is direct consumers, which can be broken down into 3 user groups roughly:

1. Heavy users: who use Google Maps at least once a day, i.e. for their commute

2. Regular users: who use Google Maps at least once a week, i.e. to discover new places

3. Occasional users: who use Google Maps at least once a month, i.e. when they travel for leisure

We are also addressing the global user base.

Given that 20% is a steep increase, it might be worthwhile to tackle regular and occasional users because their room to increase/ yield is larger than with heavy users.

Let's look at their pain points then:

Regular and occasional users both haven't discovered how Google Maps could support them in their daily lives. Likely, both groups face challenges such as daily commuting or travel from their home to see friends, or run errands. If you already know your area, you shouldn't necessarily need Google Maps to help you with the navigation or opening hours.

However, there are day-to-day pain points Google Maps could address:

- booking a service, visit or appointment, because they still have to do this even if they know the place already

- get from A to B

- finding contact details of a place, because they may not have all contacts of places in their area registered.

- coordinate with friends and family members to get somewhere on time

Either the user group isn't aware of Google Maps offering or they use other tools, such as Apple Maps, Waze or TripAdvisor.

- Can we win some share from Apple Maps or Waze or TripAdvisor? Or do we create a completely new solution?

Given the pain points, I would formulate the following problems we could address, ranked by impact/importance and alignment with the goal to increase engagement:

1. Coordination with friends and family

2. Get from A to B

3. Book a service or appointment

4. Finding contact details

1 has the highest yield because it can offer a completely new functionality that will differentiate Google Maps from other solutions. Given that Google already has infrastructure to allow people to collaborate and therefore the needed know how, the effort may be smaller than it sounds at first.

I will choose to go with problem 1: Coordination with friends and family.

Solutions could look like:

1. The ability to collaborate on itineraries as a group, i.e. people can add stops or suggestions to a Google Maps itinerary.

2. Allowing view access of someone's journey with their consent

3. Creating dedicated groups with interactive journeys: chat and scheduling

I will go with 1 again, because this has the highest value for effort. The solution could look like Airbnb's wishlists where users can invite users to their travel if they go together.

Success metrics are of course the engagement with the feature but overall Google Maps.

We'd need to measure how users that are being shown this feature interact versus users that do not have the option in order to attribute impact correctly. I therefore suggest to  AB test and randomly assign users from the two groups the new experience and the current experience without the group feature.

Over the course of 2-4 weeks or until statistical significance is reached, review engagement rate with the feature and compare the control and test group.

As secondary metrics, we could look at the number of clicks per invitee or group member within the itinerary. A "negative" metric to look at is bounce rate: do users churn when presented with the additional step to add invitees to their travel plan?

To learn about how the users deal with this feature, data like number of invitees on an itinerary. This would help refine the use case.

To sum up:

We will address regular and occasional users, as I believe this group has the highest yield to hit the 20% engagement increase.

The users will be exposed to a new feature that might draw them to Google Maps. The new feature is group collaboration, i.e. users can interact with each other and collaborate in a journey. Next to the engagement rate, we want to consider the clicks per invitee as an activation metric. We also want to keep the bounce rate in check as a guardrail metric.

We measure and iterate

Based on the above information, I would choose the smart summary and the AI generated itineraries. This would allow the business user to spend their time wisely on good places thereby enhancing their experience of visiting the location. Given that this would also help improve engagement, we could also have an advertising layer on top a little later, where we could have sponsored restaurants on the route that the traveller is taking, where the restaurants could place ads on maps so that they could get more visitors. We could prominently display these as sponsored. 

For these solutions, we see that we could see an improvement on the engagement metrics that we have. 

To improve Google Maps, there are several areas that can be focused on to enhance the user experiance and add value to the product. There list out the points are features, development complex and user risk management.

1. User Impression (AR technology)
2. Accuracy & Offline functionality
3. Connections Availability
4. Customization & Modes for User
5. Users & Developers Community

User Impression (AR Technology):

Explore oppertunities to integrate AR technology into Google Maps to enhance the visualization of navigation routes and points of interest. this can provide users with more intuitive and immersive navigation experiances, particularly in urban areas, tourist places. Show to live weather condition is use to plan according to the users planning and engagement.

Accuracy and Offline Functionality:

Invest in improving the accuracy of navigation routes and realtime traffic updates. This can be achived through detter integration of GPS data, Machine learning algorithms for predictingtraffic patterns and leveraging user feedback to identify and correct inaccuracies.

Enhance the offline functionality of google maps to allow users to access maps and navigation features even when they don't have an internet connection. This can invlove optimizing map data storage, enabling offline navigation capabilities, and providing seamless transition between online and offline modes.

Connections Availability:

Create a connections with public and authorized private sectors. Sectors integrate with their transit systems, availability time, live status like service, maintanance ect. Update and express their modes of work and schedules. It provide comprehensive and accurate information to user for create more user information and experiance and helps to sectors business growth. Must to express and detailing Risk Management points to sector. Risk Complixity is meadium.

Customization & Mode of User:

Personalized recommendations to users where utilize machine learning algorithms to provide personalized recomendations for places to visit,eat and explore based on users preferences, past behaviour and local history. This can enhance user engagement and satisfaction by offering tailored suggestions that align with their interests.

User mode is show suggestion based on their mode. Like traveller can explore more places and details, Delivery person can get more detailing the small street view. Vendors and Business peoples get more explore in their own intrested area and business needs.

Users & Developer Community:

Establish channels for community engagement and feedbacks to gather input from users on ways to improve Google Maps. This can include forums, surveys and user testing sessions to identify pain points, gathering features request and priorites product enhancements based on user needs and perferences.

This is how I will present my solution - 

Step 1 

First of all, I will explain what the application does as per my understanding (to ensure that me and the interviewer are on the same page).

Google Maps is an application that helps users in navigating to different places. It also helps in exploring nearby locations basis your particular needs. It has added features to show travel history, pin locations for future use, and see reviews and ratings for places around. 

I hope this is enough knowledge for the application for this discussion.

Step 2

Clarify questions -

1. What is the goal of improving Google Maps? It is for new user acquisition, user retention, or user experience? 

Let us improve it for the user experience for now. 

2. Is there any specific geography, or specific demographics we are improving experience for? - No... we are targeting all users

3. We are planning for changes in the web app or mobile app. Let's do this for the mobile app. 

So - The problem statement is to improve the mobile app user experience for all Google Maps users. 

Step 3

Understand users - 

As Google Maps is mainly a navigation app, hence obviously it is more used during commuting/traveling. There are 2 kinds of travelers - Travellers who know the route (daily commuters) and Travellers who are visiting new places. On that basis, I will divide the users into 2 categories.

1. regular commuters - 

People who go to specific places regularly (office, tuition, kids' school etc) and are mostly aware of the route. During these commutes, they don't use Google Maps. These are generally the same city commutes. 

Pain points - 

1a. They are not aware of road closures on their route. 

1b. They can't predict the traffic conditions beforehand and hence tend to reach late to destination.  

1c. Route optimization basis live traffic updates, when there is more than 1 stop. 

2. New place travellers - 

These are travelers who go to new places in their personal vehicles and use Google Maps for navigation. They generally travel with family, in groups with friends. 

Pain points - 

2a. Confusion when there are flyovers and underpasses as information is not clear on the app. 

2b. Route optimization that takes users to unexpected roads leading to confusion

2c. Follow another car during long travel. 

Step 4:

We can decide to solve for 1 particular user persona or both personas as the interviewer agrees. 

I think both user personas are important as "Regular Commuters" can use maps at more frequency, and "New Place Travellers" use Maps for longer sessions comparatively. 

Let us solve for both personas for this discussion - 

Solutions - 

1a. For a regular commuter, Maps to raise an alert if there is any road closure on any of the routes the user takes. This will alert the user and the user to give feedback if this information was helpful or not. 

1b. As Maps know  all the following - 

the time the user reaches the destination generally   

The traffic conditions on all routes

Maps to suggest the latest time by which the user has to leave from the source to reach in time and correspondingly fastest route. 

1c. When the user has multiple destinations, maps togive the option to optimize route based on live traffic conditions. 

2a. When there are underpass or flyover options on road, maps to give up/down arrows to exactly show which route to take.

2b. Ask for user consent if route optimization is required (to avoid toll plaza or something else) or user wants to go on the highway itself without optimizing distance and time.  

2c. A new feature to allow maps users to generate and share pin to a group. Once that pin is matched, all the cars will be able to know the location of the other cars and they can decide to follow one of the cars in the group (the user who generated the pin).  

Step5 - 

Prioritization - First we will understand which userbase is more important for Google right now. if the interviewer doesn't comment on that, prioritization is to be done for all the 6 features basis Rice framework. 

Step 6 - 

Success metric - Main setback while using google maps - 

1. Rerouting because of wrong route taken/coming back because of congestion/road block

2. long waiting time on roads (as Google map could not alert the regular commuter earlier)

We will judge each of these solutions on these setbacks. for each of the solutions, how these setback experiences have decreased. 

Other than that, % of times the user has taken the each of suggested options will be an individual metric. 

 

Everyone, @bijan - Please provide feedback on my solution. 

                     

 

Clarification
Which platform - Website, Android app, IOS app, APIs, etc. 
Any particular country's users, as different countries will have different needs - India
Any particular user segment within the country - Citizens, delivery boys, businesses

Goals
Product Goals - Help people navigate and explore places
Company goals - Earn from businesses by providing APIs, revenue from App advertisement, booking commissions

What do we want to improve?
Revenue - By Ads 
Revenue - By getting more users 
Revenue - By improving user engagement 
Experience - Better navigation from A to B
Experience - Better exploration of places 

User journey for navigation from A to B
1-User decision to go from A to B [Not in App]
2-Choice - Already known, Ask people, Use google map [Not in app]
3-Add Inputs in Google maps 
4-Find navigation results
5-View navigation details 
6- Use the navigation view 
7- Reach

Pain points related to relevant user steps 
3.1- Wrong Input B (Even A) is selected where there are multiple names with similar names as B

4.1- Different routes shown on the maps have their time mentioned on the route, however when routes are closer its difficult to find which time one belongs to which route
4.2 If place B is closed, the info is unavailable over the map 
4.3 If place B is marked slightly incorrectly on the map, the user has to go through the same trouble that many others have gone through, and what could have been predicted by maps

5.1- Crowd information within the selected mode of transport like how crowded the bus or metro would be is not told.
5.2 - Auto Fare could be more realistic or with some confidence level 

6.1- The navigation view is not pointing to the way I am moving 
6.2- Path is not clear in bridges
6.3- Users get confused at intersections

7.1 -

Ask the interviewer, if he/she would want to pick any specific problem and then work on it. If not then prioritize one of them and work on it. Prioritization can be based on these 
1- No users facing the issue
2- No of negative feedback on it (reviews)
3- User interviews to understand the problem

What's the real problem?
Possible issues
1- Google itself is not able to understand if past users took the bridge or otherwise. 
2- Google is able to understand but can't show it on the map.
3- Google is showing it but in a very subtle way - I think this is the issue, as google does show the way, but it's difficult to perceive.

Possible solutions
1-Mention at the top Take the bridge/ don't take the bridge 
2- Color or indicate bridges in a specific way so that when it is on the route, users understand them clearly.
3- Add a 3D element to the map to show the height aspect
4- Add an AR experience on the map, wherein an object is shown on the road which can be followed by the user.

Select a solution on a basis of feasibility, cost, time, impact 
1 & 2 look simple and feasible. We need to do a test to check how impactful they would be. This can be done using A/B testing.

Metric to check the impact - 
# Users who took the wrong route / total users on the route 
Wrong route- Rerouting, U-turn, returned to the same path 

# Users who took the wrong route with solution 1 / total users on the route 

# Users who took the wrong route with solution 2 / total users on the route 

Explain and clarify the product.

 

Strategic objectives: 

1/ Acquiring new users: While Maps has a lot of users, its not present on iOS by default. Many iOS users maybe be happy with Apple maps since its the default. This is a problem. 

2/ Increasing engagement with existing users: If I have to chose, I would prioritize this, engagement. To drive more engagement, you have to improve both existing use cases and also address new use cases. Basically provide more value. That will draw in new users even from iOS. Monetization will come if engagement is high.  

3/ Monetization

 

There are primarily two types of use cases which interweave with each other 

1/ Navigation: Go from A to B. This can be in car, foot, public transport etc. Largely intent on where to go is known.Figuring out the best way to go and guide during the journey.  

2/ Exploring a place: This I think is more top of funnel. Intent maybe clear (Seattle Zoo), or it maybe quite vague (mexican restaurants). Customer journey will typically across these two use cases back and forth. 

 

If I have to pick, I will prioritize exploring a place as higher priority. This is really top of funnel - this is where user is spending a lot of time deciding what to do, if we nail this right, then the next step is “how to get there” which navigation will take care off.  Lets look at the customer journey and pain points.  

 

For this exercise, will focus on US market. Most of the population has a good smartphone with decent connectivity. 

 

 

If I have to pick one, I will pick voice assistant based interactive seach experience to quickly find “what to do”. This ties to core google mission of helping user quckly find what they want and get them going. If we do a good job here, the other tasks are bottom of funnel and we can tackle them later. 

 

Success metrics to track: We will do an A/B test before we roll out. Key objective is: Help user finalize what they want to do faster. We want to 1/ Increase number of user who could finalize what they want to do, 2/ Decrease time to find what they want to do. 

Output metric: DId the user convert? Placed an order, started navigation, added to calendar. WE can define a set of actions as conversion events in the app. 

1/ Did the conversion events go up for test group compared to control?

2/ How many users actually used the experience? 

 

3/ How many conversion events are attributable to the interactions in the experience? For e.g, if they chose something during the session, or within 2 hrs of the session.

4/ Its diffcult to determine if time spent on deision making has gone down. Instaed if we find that conversion events have gone up, then it means they are fiidng value in the new exp and are using it more.

Start by explaining your understanding of Google Maps.

It is a free web/mobile-based feature that allows users to 

1. navigate from Point A to B, trip planning 
2. locate restaurants, hair salons, other points of interest around a point on the map
3. Businesses use to sponsor advertisements based on Map search string.

 

Clarify what does improvement means, "Improve" is a loaded term - what do we mean by improvement: increased ad revenue, improve the quality of the results, increase downloads, improve engagement, or something else?

 

In this case, we are going to focus on engagement (confirm with the interviewer)

 

Clarify that the improvement or increasing engagement focuses on a particular channel: mobile, web, specific browser, OS, etc.? (we will go with holistic)

 

Clarify if there are any constraints, such as timeline or engineering resource limitation, that you need to work with (no restriction)

 

Summarize - we want to increase engagement of Google maps on all platforms

 

As we are short on time, I want to focus on a critical persona or user segments and its use cases, prioritize the top use cases of the persona and work towards a practical solution that improves engagement. Ask - if the interviewer is comfortable with this high-level approach?

 

User segments

• Locals - folks who are local to the place and interested in using google maps for daily commute, local restaurant/shops lookup
• Travelers - folks who are traveling to a place and are interested in planning a trip, explore new areas, look up restaurants, museums, etc.
• Businesses - using Google maps for supply chain optimization, advertising their business, etc.

As our goal is to improve engagement, I think Locals and Travelers provide us the most opportunities to achieve this goal. To narrow down even further, I would go with the Travelers user segment, and I think some of the use cases of this segment might overlap with Locals.

 

User segment selected - Travelers

 

Let's list out some of their use cases.

 

1. As a traveler, I want to route my trips with public transportation options so that I can cover all the places I want to visit most efficiently.
2. As a traveler, I want to have the maps available to me offline so that I do not have to pay roaming/ data charges.
3. As a traveler, I want to know if there are any special local events happenings and if any tickets are available so that I can plan to attend those.
4. As a traveler, I want to know what times are best to visit museums and tourist hot spots so that I can avoid heavy tourist foot traffic and high entry ticket costs.

 

Out of the stories or use cases above, I think #1 and #4 can be collapsed into one and can help address two user needs so I will go with these as the highest priority stories

 

How do we solve these stories?

 

Solution 1: Google maps can help prepare an itinerary for the customers every day based on user inputs. For example, the user can select the places they want to visit, times when s/he wants to eat food or take a break. Ask whether to optimize for time or cost; based on it, the Google map gives out the most optimized path.

 

Solution 2: Customer uses the Google map to draw out /select the places that he/she wants to visit, including the order s/he intends to see, and Google maps overlay it with the best possible public/private transportation options.

 

Solution 3: Surprise me - we can create a simple quiz that helps us understand their tastes about travel, and based on it, Google maps out an itinerary that would fit customers taste

 

Solution 1 - aligns with our goal - L, development effort - L

Solution 2 - aligns with our goal - M, development effort - L.

Solution 3 - aligns with our goal - S, development effort- M.

 

Based on the above t-shirt sizing, even though Solution 1 has a high development cost but it does provide us the most engagement, so I would prioritize developing solution 1

 

I want to roll this feature out for a small percentage of users first, maybe 5-10%, and evaluate some critical metrics before scaling these features.

 

Key metrics I would focus on

• Avg time spent on the feature
• D/W/M active users of the feature
• % of customers using the feature/ customer exposed to the feature

 

 

 

Me: To start off, Google Maps is the most popular navigation product from Google. Though there are other products within that product, navigation remains to be the primary focus. It's also supported on different device types such as mobile and desktop/laptop computers. Is there anything else about the Google Maps product that you would have expected to have also heard? 

Interviewer: no.

Me: As I stated there is the navigation product but then there are also products like Commute, Find Nearby Places, etc. Amongst those, I would like to double click on Restaurants. Is that ok?

Me: Give me a few seconds to think please. After 5 seconds, I am thinking that I should probably take the same approach that I take at work as a PM. Thinking of it, I always think about what we are trying to achieve at 50K foot level and along with I naturally think about what user type I need to solution for. I then think of combination of user journey / what problems they have to define solutions. Is it ok if I take similar approach? 

Interviewer: works for me. Have at it!

Me: Speaking of goal at that 50K foot level, Google Maps is not a new product and Google is surely not a startup so customer acqusition is prob not a key goal. Customer Retention and Adoption is also not a likely goal since Google Maps, atleast from what I know, dominates in its category. However, considering Google is mostly a digital advert player what is important is User Engagement since more users use the product for more things the more information about customers Google gets to gather and that helps drive revenue through advertising. Did you have something else that you want to focus on besides Customer Engagement? 

Interviewer: In the interest of time, we can proceed with your assumptions.

Me: There couple be many ways to think of user types, but what comes to mind right now  is:

1. Tourists

2. Locals who want to go out for dinner / lunch w/ friends and family 

3. Business professionals during work hours

Let's focus on #2 since per my knowledge most people in US don't cook at home and that's true for lunch and dinner 7 days a week. While, tourists are not always on vacation and while on vacation are generally focused on tourist spots and find food on the way (it's just easier than to try and plan so much). 

Can you please give me some time to think of user needs? 

 

Needs:

1. Remotely planning dinner place with friends gets challenging. 

2. Can't be too sure of how good the place will be. Reviews are one thing but would I like it? What's the surity that other people's taste will be something that I would like? 

3. People driving to congested places worry about parking.

4. People don't want to surf through list of all favorite restaurants but may want to be specific to the intent of dining out.

Out of these, #2 #1 and #3 are more frequent uses cases hence I would focus on those. 

 

Solutions:

While I solutions, I will also attempt to rate them using scale of 1-5 (1 being low and 5 being high), for Feasibility, Complexity and Value-Add to customer. These ratings would be rather subjective though. 

#2: Can't be too sure if specifically I will like this place.

a)It's great to know n number of people rated this place as 4/5 but that doesn't mean I will like it. Maybe I have dietary restrictions such as being veg, vegan, or gluten allergy, lactose intolerant, etc. Capability to keep track of what restaurants I have like (google knows it's menu maybe or asks me to enter specific dishes I liked after every visit) and recommend places based on what I have liked in the past. (F: 5 C: 1 V: 2)

b) Track what places my friends and I both have liked (ratings of 4 and above) and suggest me places based on what my friends have liked.   (F:5, C:1, V:5)

c) Just like how Google rates importance of web pages, assume my liking for a place based on freq of visit for places I have rated 3.5 and above. Inform me when I choose a place, you have only been to this place 3 times last year while there are other places in the area you have rated 3.5 but still have been more times. You sure you want to go here? (F:5, C:3, V:2)

#3: People driving to congested places worry about parking.

a) Keep track of how congested parking is in the area every hour so I can plan appropriately. Can then prompt me what other places I could choose based on my likings and parking situation for the time I plan to visit. Could use data from city meters which are mostly all digital now. (F:3, C:4, V:3)

b) Allow me to reserve parking through intergration with parking spot apps. (F:5, C:1, V:4)

#4: Planning with a group of friends is challening:

a) Enable voting / tally system for planning dinner spot remotely. (F:5, C:2, V:3)

b) Display times last call for drinks/food, which places have open tents with furnace/without furnace, etc. (helps with pandemic times). (F:3, C:3, V:2)

c) While planning together with friends, inform during voting that x of your friend in the planning group doesn't like this place or rated it low but still goes there.  (F:4, C:3, V:3)

I notice that some of my options are rather simple to implement but some of them rely on implementation of AI. From a roadmap standpoint, I woud plan for abut 3-4 features being: 2b, 3b, 4a, 4b. I could still think of some of the rankings could change but let's consider these final for now. There are downsides / potential challenges to some of these such as it appears that my mindset is more US based and some of my features may not apply for some other countries such as parking spot app integration or parking spot availability during x hours. Even within US, not all meter spots are likely digitized so that may not work for those cities. 

Overall, though, I think Google maps restaurant product has been quite well done but there are additional features that could be added such as easing the customer experience of planning dinner spot remotely together instead of long whatsapp / phone conversations, enhancing parking experiences,etc. and solving all of these pain points from within the Google Maps app. This would help keep customers centralized and increase engagement. This boards well for Google from gathering additional customer data that could be leveraged for advertising hence supporting their advertiszing / revenue growth business model. 

 

 

Google Maps as a platform has multiple use cases with App & Website for end-users & businesses. Also, Google Maps has API integrations available supporting other apps such as taxi & delivery apps. For purpose of this discussion would it be okay to limit the discussion to user-facing usecases in Google Maps?

Assuming the interviewer agrees, as an end user still Google Maps has a lot of features such as:

1. Navigation from Place A to Place B for multiple supported modes of transport with ability to predict time, traffic levels etc

2. Finding & rating places such as touristy places, restaurants etc

3. Street view (as part of Google Earth)

So to focus for this discussion would it be okay to focus on Google Maps Place discovery product especially with focus on restaurants?

Also, improvement of the product can be focussed on either to boost acquisition, engagement, monetization or retention. For a product like Google Maps being a consumer App, Retention and Engagement would both be interlinked. Would it be fair to focus on Engagement as primary goal of improvement for Google Maps?

Assuming, interviewer said Yes to this. Thats great, to establish a process of tackling improvement in engagement for Google Maps, we can do the following:

1. First we will look at some relevant user segments of Google Maps Navigation Functionality:

2. Select a suitable sizeable user segment for whom we can improve engagement by first elucidating their pain points

3. List down feasible solutions

4. Prioritize solutions for Effort vs Impact

5. Assess some risks (Pros & Cons)

In terms of choosing a suitable user segment for Navigation:

1. Navigating within 2 hours travel for work/liesure (2 hours is approx number, ideally from data we can capture a more definitive threshold)

2. Navigating more than 2 hours for work/liesure (instilling a long distance travel)

Problem Statement for long distance travel:

1. In long distance travel, as a driver, I want to manage Fatigue by taking adequate stops or rotating among drivers

2. In liesurely roadtrips drivers want to manage route for optimizing joy in roadtrips the maximum to optimize for distance, scenic spots & good rest stops

3. In liesurely road trips, families or friends would like to create & sustain memories of the trips

4. As a long distance drive, I want to have adequate safety related information to manage poor quality roads, best time of day to drive, road blocks due to accidents etc.

Solutions:

1. AI based road assist to customize route based on personal preferences & provide a general safety summary to keep in my mind before I start.

2. AI based memory generator which uses ride info, photos clicked and saved in Google Photos along with route snap & music played during drive

3. Fatigue alerts which suggest rest breaks after certain distance of travel

4. Rest-stop & Fuelign alerts when the next rest stop or fueling stop is considerable distance away

What Does Google Maps do?Google maps solves people's needs for reaching from point A to point B without relying on anyone else. It allows people to commute from point A to point B using various modes of transport without the hassle of asking around to people, navigating through offline map.

The USP of the product is to make people self-sufficient to commute anywhere across the world.

Clarifying Questions

1. Motive of improving google maps

   1. Do we want to improve revenue?

   2. Do we want to improve customer retention?

   3. Do we want to improve customer engagement/adoption?

2. Are we targeting any specific user base, geography, channel.

3. Are we looking at specific timelines and budget for the improvement?

Identify User Personas

1. International Travellers

2. Domestic Travellers

   1. Tourist

   2. Work Trip

   3. Visiting friends/family

   4. Medical Consultation

3. Locals within city

   1. Delivery executives

   2. Cab/ Auto drivers

   3. Localites

4. Locals driving on outskirts

   1. Leisure outings

Report Customer Needs

Prioritising user needs

User Story No.	Reach	Impact	Alignment with need	Priority
1	High	High	Improve revenue by cross application integration   Improves customer satisfaction	1
2	Medium	Low	Improve customer satisfaction	3
3	High	Low	Improve customer experience	2

List & Evaluate Solutions

Summary

On the basis of impact to customer experience, effort of implementation and alignment with business, i will prioritise the feature with Highest impact an Lowest effort, which is integration of media player within maps, so that no one ever misses a turn again in order to change music.

The feature will be provided as an option, if you have media playing in background, a pop up, asking if you want to open it in apps. Giving users choice of integration, on the basis of need.

KPIs to track

 

1. User Adoption: Number of users choosing to embed it in maps

2. User Engagement: Number of clicks on media player after embedding.

3. User Retention: Number of users interacting with media player again after first use

Google maps is expected to help commuter smoothly move to place or intended activity (eating, shopping, etc)

Clarifying questions: what is considered in improvement here - anything specific such as improving eta, improving search et,

Assuming open ended

The north star for Google should be amount of time it's in use. So the improvement shall be around improving usage.

 

Let's pick some use cases:

Improve instances of use

- regular commuters may not be using the maps assuming they know the route

- users may be using the maps only while driving  

 

Improve time of use

- improve the accuracy of small lanes, so that end to end journey can be covered in maps

- provide alternatives for the intent so that even for known places a user's checks Google maps

 

Improve retention and repeat of the users

- getting accurate estimates in case of rains or any other unusual scenarios

- ability to choose the route based on more than just eta.

- easy conmectity with various devices such as automobile screens

 

Out of all these regular committees might form a very big portion of the users. How can be we bring the regular commuters and walkers  and public transport takers on maps?

 

Need gap

- as a regular commuters only want to know about any detractors. I may want to use the screen for other engagements such as listening to music,

- as a regular commuters(driving or walker) I have certain stops or places on the way.

 

Ideas

- Google maps can smartly change from widget to full screen and vice versa based on no change in the flow or any possible detraction

- Google maps can create immersive experience that tells about new places coming up in the area, so people get to know about them and explore them

- Google maps share the latest offers on the places on my route

 

Effort:

Out of the three

- 1 should be low effort

- 2 will be low effort given new business onboard fast to Google maps now. But the instances of having new places around might be low

- offers on places might be operational dependency to kickstart till it becomes flywheel

 

So, I will go with first