What product would you build at Google to support new parents?

Clarifying Questions-
Let me undertsand the question better, you want me as a PM at Google to build a product to support new parents. And by new parents you mean both mother and father who just had a new born baby- that mean first time parents as well as parents who have had a child before but they just had another child. Is that correct?- Yes

Okay and let's clasiffy new as well, someone who just had a baby and is in between the 0-12 months phase. Is that safe to assume?- Yes

Cool. I will later but first I have some questions. What is the goal of the business through the product?- Increase engagement, drive retention, enable new monetization models, Strengthen Google’s position in family and health domains

So for the sake of the interview can I just focus on increase in engagement here? Because it seems to me the rest of the business goals would just follow if I can crack the enagagement side of it- Yes

great! Is this a new product that you want me to build from scartch or this would be more like a feature rolled out on an existing product?- You have the freedom to build from scratch or leverage/extend existing Google products — your call.

Okay in that case, I'll ball park that though and circle back later in the GTM playbook as i proceed with the problem. DOes that sound good to you?- Yes, as long as you justify the decision when you get there

Okay is there anyone else in the market who has cracked this particular problem?- Yes

How are they solving the problem?- Answers

okay do you have something in mind that we want to do differently?- Feel free to aAssume this is a strategic investment bet — not a 20% project.

Any specific geography in mind where you have already figured could be great adoption or its up for assumption?- Assume (I'll prioritize U.S. as primary market for v1 — highest monetization potential, mature Android + Nest penetration, and high digital parenting behavior)

Problem Statement:
okay great. So if I understand the problem correctly. As PM i'm supposed to launch a product supporting parents in USA who just had a child. And the goal is to drive engagement into the platform and we have a timeline about 6/9 months to do so. Are we on the same page about this?

Personas:
Let's understand a bit of personas here:

 1. Single moms and father who are working professionals and are widowed right after child birth and have the sole responsibility to raise the child and juggle the work as well 

2. Single moms and fathers who are working professionals and are divorced right after child birth or before child birth and have the responsibility to raise the child and juggle work 

3. Parents who have just become first timers and have no extended family to support them and both are working professionals 

4. Parents who have more than one children and have just given birth to another child and both are working professionals and no extended families 

5. Couples who have become parents and have an extended family to support them. 

 These are just broadly the 5 out of many personas that I had list down. and looking from the engagement potential and also from a future commercial lens I would actually narrow down to solving for Persona 2 i.e. Single moms and fathers who are working professionals and are divorced right after child birth or before child birth and have the responsibility to raise the child and juggle work Does that sound good to you?- Yes

Now let's understand their pain points and user stories.

 1. As a divorced single new parent, I want to take care of my child's basic needs like food, sleep and hygene during the 1st 12 months of birth 

2. As a divorced single new parent, I want to keep earning so that I can afford the expenses for a babies day care 

3. As a divorced single new parent, I want to know how to properly feed my baby 

4. As a divorced single new parent, I want to know how my baby is responding and what is it trying to communicate 

5. As a divorced single new parent, I want to know if my baby is awake when I'm sleeping 

 These are broadly the 5 user stories that kind of have relatively high pain points, and if solved have an extremely high engagement and future commercial potentials. I'd want to prioritize among these 5 and choose just one. Does that sound good? -Yes

I think. User story 1 can be solved by a parent's own action by taking a maternal leave from work and choosing to stay home and then researching on itself. Here the product would be more of an assistive model rather than solving the problem at core, also it has quite top competitors like Youtube which is a free learning platform. 

 User story 2,maybe the pain lies in finding part-time WFH kind of jobs which pays well and ensures there's a good inflow of money. This can be solved by the other job platforms out there. 

 User story 3 same as user story 1 

 User story 4 and 5 is where I see a real problem which almost no one is solving and can be solved uniquely and positioned unqiuely and we can leverage google existing tech and data and capabolties to come witha MVP in like couple of months.

 However, I would want to prioritize User story 4 because if I can understand what my baby is communicating to me just by understanding the gestures, the cries etc then this would be a game changer and would be an engagement hit and also can be monetized later and scale as well. It also has other business potentials, meaning other businesses can also leverage google's tech to build their products, which is always good.

Solutions:
Let's try providing couple of solutions right at the top of my mind. The way to understand what a child is saying is through verbal, audio and sensory signals from body, like heat signature, pulse, etc. But all these in silos would not make much of an impact, but all these feedbacks combined we can then use Google's exiting data and AI models to predict with say close to 90% confidence score what the baby wants to convey or what the baby needs. So the essential problem now becomes how can I productize this solution in such a way which is low effort, high impact and with the resources that I have which will help me learn maximum what is working what is not and then scale from there, That should be the goal for the next 6 months. I have couple of ways we can do it. I would want to prioritize out of it. 

So now I know that I would want to collect visual, audio and sensory signals of the baby into an application where complex computations would be done and then the output would be shown to the single parent with the baby's need. 

 1. We can build a videocam that is specifically built to record baby's movements and audios and then a physical patch we can stick on the baby's arm or chest to get the baby's vitals into an application with an interface for the parent.- The tradeoff here is there is a lot of hardware specs involved here and gets into multi-form factor mode which makes the solution more complex as then we have to build 3 different applications and 2 different firmwares and then integrate into a centralized solution which is time taking high effort and the entire thing could simply fail. This is not something that I would want to do now, maybe later.

 2. We can build a baby companion in the form of robot, that always follows the baby or monitor the baby to get all these signals and then whenever the baby probably needs something the robot can notify the parent to deliver that- Again this becomes a problem becuase how do we ensure that the robot is particulary monutoring the baby with 100% accuracy, and there is a certain elemnet to keep the robot charged and again multi form factors and multi firmware comes into the picture which makes it a long shot rather than something I would pursue immediately. 

 3. What we can do right now, is a build a simple mobile application through which the parent video record the baby whenever the parent feels that there is something the baby wants to convey or the baby needs at that particular time, yes we do have to build a patch that can be placed on the baby's body but again specifically for the patch there's plenty of softwares out there which provides vitals level solution, we can simply partner with one and white label it that way we have to focus on mobile application. Morever, this makes adoption easy as a mobile application is something that is easy to download, easy to use, and video capture is something that is already a use case that is solved for years so no learning curve to that. 

 So the solution would look like this- Simple video with audio to be captured and processed inside the application + the vital signals from the baby's patch directly feed into the application- takes around 2-3 seconds to process (we can set an SLA for this) and then the application tells the parent to lets say feed the baby X quantity of Y, or like the baby needs a bath, or like baby needs sleep etc etc. This could be a unique MVP product for us.

Metrics to track:

App Installs – Measures top-of-funnel interest and marketing effectiveness. 

Account Creations / Day 1 Activations – Indicates how well users are converting post-install.

Patch Pairing Rate – Shows ease of hardware integration; critical for functionality.

First Successful Prediction Rate (within 24 hrs) – Measures time-to-value; essential for user retention. 

Daily / Weekly / Monthly Active Users (DAU/WAU/MAU) – Core health indicators for product usage. 

Avg. Sessions per Day – Measures depth of engagement in daily life.

Video Captures per User per Day – Indicates how often users rely on the product

Feature Usage Split (audio-only / vitals / full multi-modal) – Helps prioritize features based on adoption

North Star Metric: # of High-Confidence Predictions Used per User per Week – Captures core value, repeat use, and trust in one.

GTM: 
To launch the first version of Google BabySense, our primary objective will be to onboard and deeply engage the first 1,000 users, with a focus on divorced or single working parents in urban U.S. metros who have newborn children. These parents often lack extended support and juggle emotional and logistical stress, making them highly motivated adopters if we demonstrate clear value.

Our go-to-market strategy will begin with a closed beta, targeting early adopters through a waitlist-driven landing page, amplified by Google-owned parenting newsletters and Gmail nudges. We'll partner with pediatric clinics, daycare centers, and influential parenting YouTubers to generate high-trust awareness, offering them early access and walkthroughs.

During the first few weeks of rollout, we’ll maintain close contact with users via feedback communities (e.g., Telegram or Discord), run weekly check-ins, and issue bi-weekly release updates to build transparency and momentum. 

The goal is to not only validate product-market fit quickly but to also establish BabySense as a credible, assistive parenting tool parents can trust—and Google can scale.

When we are referring to new parents, we are referring to parents who are planning for kids or expecting kids or already have kids in the age group of 0-5 or 5-10 years? → parents to kids of 5-10 years

Do we have any specific objective in mind or some case study has been conducted on why we are building this new product for parents? → Make assumptions

Are we thinking of launching this product in the next 1-2 years or have a much longer horizon? → 1 to 2 years

Have we decided on whether it should be a hardware or a software product? → Up for discussion

Are we thinking of launching this product in any specific geo (needs of the US parents and Indian parents might be quite different)? → Lets target India for now

Will this product be exclusively used by kids or exclusively by parents? → Up for discussion

I am assuming that the kids do not have any disabilities

Google’s mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Thinking along the same lines, the goal of this product for new parents can be something which provides the parents with all the information about his/her own kids to make useful decisions as well as all the information that a new parent needs to raise a child being made available in an organized manner.

User groups/personas:

1. Working couples of nuclear families (without grandparents or other family members) - absence of family help to check on the child
2. Parents with at home mother/father to attend to the needs of the children
3. Parents both working from home
4. Working couples staying with grandparents (immediate family help available but these folks are not very tech savvy)

I am trying to focus on the 1st user group as these types of families are constantly on the rise and would be eager to use solutions for better growth of their children. Maybe similar solutions can be extended to 2nd and 3rd user groups later on.

Pain Points / Needs:

1. Safety of the child while at school, while returning to home, at home as well as attending any extra curricular activities (though a house help will most probably be available)
2. Worried about the child’s diet (whether he/she is finishing lunch snacks on time) and not knowing what would be good for growth → ample information already available web
3. Worried about his/her learning (at school and co-curricular)
4. Worried whether he/she is not wasting time on social media and also watching age-appropriate content → Solutions already available
5. Worried that the child is not getting into wrong company → more of a concern in the adolescent age so the frequency and the number of such users would be low
6. Worried that the child might be missing out on a nurturing environment → more at an emotional level and will not consider this for productization without conducting more user research

So, I am trying to mainly prioritize the needs or worries of the parents around safety and overall well being and growth of their kids.

Solutions:

1. Safety - Tiny Wearable + App for parents

• constantly detects surrounding environment and sends feed to parents when parents request
• notify with feed when any untoward incident has happened or about to happen
• with 1 click, 2 clicks or 3 clicks, the child can notify his/her parents of their well being
• instantly notify parents if the child loses it
• sense and notify parents if children are becoming anxious for any reason

2. 2-sided app for teacher at school or instructor at a co-curricular center

• questionnaires for teachers/instructors to update on what they taught on a specific day
• questionnaires for each student to fill up at the end of the day in the presence of parents
• a detailed & summarized version is available for parents to know

3. Learning - Tiny Wearable + App for parents

• constantly detect and provide every 30-min summary of what is being taught
• once the kid is free, ask him/her what has he/she learnt
• for co-curricular activities, the entire activity duration can be recorded or only the instances where the kid did well or faltered
• send the feed to parents
• constantly monitor the language being used by the kid and advise him/her not to use improper language

4. Recommendation engine for safety

• If a kid regularly gets into brawls or gets anxious, parents can be provided with suggestions on how the kid can be helped

5. Recommendation engine for learning

• If a kid is found to be good at some activity, parents can be advised on how to nurture the child to improve at the activity even further
• If the engine senses the child has a lot of free time, parents can be suggested on what else the kid can learn
• If a kid is found to having issues with understanding the fundamentals of certain concepts, the parents can be provided with information to teach the child

I will consider alignment with business objective, impact on user experience, effort to prioritize the above solutions Solution 2 will have a very low impact user experience as parents will not get insights into the actual day-to-day happenings and the information provided by solution 2 is kind of already available to parents while having every day discussion with their kids

Solution 4 and 5 follow solution 1 and 3 respectively.

Between solution 1 and solution 3, I would want to prioritize solution 1 as safety is a huge concern for the parents so impact on user experience would be high but since it needs to be delivered within a year or 2, I don’t think we have the technology yet to detect such untoward incidents.

Solution 3 will be prioritized for implementation.

In terms of metrics, I would like to consider the following:

1. Number of DAU and MAU
2. Frequently used workflows
3. Monitor the feedback from parents/users
4. Monitor the improvement in the kids’ learning after 6-months to 1 year usage

Just to understand the question better, we are talking about designing a product for new parents whose primary obejctive would be to take the best care of their new born child. To clarify my understanding, new parents include both first time parents and parents who have become parents before as well. Also, the new parents phase I would assume would be for the next one year starting from the birth of the child ? Yes, correct

Do we already have some product for this which needs to be improved or brand new product? Brand new product

Do we plan to launch it for a specific market? Open to suggestions

Do we plan to launch a mobile app or web portal? Open to suggestions

What is the business goal here? Open to suggestions

Assumptions -

Since the child birth and child care rules differe from country to country, we would start with a specific market, in this case, say India.

Since the product is going to be for new parents, who will be busy most of the time with the baby, it would make sense to build a product which is easy to carry and use on the go, so a mobile app will suit the needs more. Moreso, since the penetration of andorid users is higher in India, we will focus on the android version of the app to begin with.

Goal -

Since the product is for new parents, I would assume the business goal here would be around improving user engagement for existing google users as well as user acquisition from first time google users. We can also think of ways to monetise the product, thereby generating additional revenue through this product.

Users -

• Parents
• Close family members
• Nanny
• Doctors

• Overwhelmed, sleep-deprived, uncertain about health, milestones, feeding, development.
• Seeking trusted, personalized guidance but drowning in too much and conflicting information.

• Uncertain about what's normal
• Need reliable answers
• Ability to track baby's milestones, vacciantion/ medicine schedule
• Parenting counselling in single/ groups

1. Parenting journey app
   1. Maintain medicine schedule and send reminders accordingly
   2. Keep track of the major dates and send reminders
   3. Maintain vaccination schedule and send reminders accordingly
   4. Make doctor appointments via hospital tie ups
   5. Information source to answer parent queries
   6. Legal formalities [P1]
      1. Payments
         1. Personal via gpay integration
         2. Cashless via integration with insurance providers
      2. Documentation
         1. Birth certificate via integration with govt website
         2. Upload scanned copy of discharge documents
   7. Baby's shopping needs [P2]
      1. Integration with health apps for medicines
      2. Integration/ Redirection with ecommerce apps for essentials/ non essentials
   8. Logisitical needs [P2]
      1. Transport arrangements via integration with cab providers
      2. Recommendation for event management services for festivities planning
2. YT channel 
   1. Curated content customised for new born needs
   2. Q&A sessions with doctors
   3. Useful playlists at a week level
3. AI baby assistant
   1. Voice based query support
   2. Voice based reminders

• Core features
  • Personalised daily timeline
    • Medicine schedule
    • Feeding schedule
    • Journal to note baby milestones, movements
  • Reminders
    • Doctor appointments [via Calendar integration]
    • Vaccination
    • Medicine
  • AI chat bot
    • Voice enabled queries

• Alpha testing
• Market the feature
• Beta testing in one specific city [say Bangalore] with a few would be parents
• Collect feedback and launch in entire city assuming no major issues
• Scale up the app to more cities at a pan India level
• Parallely start focussing on the execution of P1 features