You are a new PM at Google Pay. Design a feature for budgeting.

1. CLARIFY:
   1. Should we be focused on mobile v. web? You choose. 
   2. Is it OK to focus on the US though features likely can be used in different countries? Yes. 
   3. In regards to budgeting, is it OK to focus on the individual consumer budget v. a company budget (given that Google Pay is more individual focused now)? Yes.
2. GOOGLE PAY BACKGROUND: Google Pay is Google's digital wallet platform and online payment system. It offers contactless payment for Android devices and watches via NFC, though you can now download the Google Pay app on iPhones. It also offers pre-populated payment information on web browsers: Chrome, Firefox and Safari. Authorization is via a pin. Google Pay just launched a massive new version of its app that now has 3 tabs: Pay (peer to peer, transaction history), Explore (deals and discounts) and Insights (history associated with bank accounts). Google's mission is to allow user's access to all information, so budgeting / insight into your spend is in line with this broader company goal.
3. GOAL: The goal of the Google Pay budgeting feature will be to increase engagement of Google Pay. Google Pay does not directly earn money for Google via transactions (unlike Apple Pay).
4. USER GROUPS: As mentioned, I am focused on the individual consumer for budgeting. There are four groups to think about. I'd like to focus on the individual, as they are the ones directly using the budgeting tool / we can build the more features for them.
   1. Individual: People using Google Pay / making their budgets. 
   2. Credit Card Networks: Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover, which will likely cover a big portion of user spend. 
   3. Banks: Banks at which users have checking / savings accounts. Likely have debit cards associated with those accounts.
   4. Investent Management Companies: Investment management companies where individuals may invest with. Could be robo advisors like Wealthfront or may have physical presences as well, like Charles Schwab. 
5. SUB USER GROUPS: Within the individual bucket, there are a few users to think about. For this work, I'd like to focus on the Never Budget group, as I think the experience we build for them has wide applications and likely is a very big population. (Note, we could have also split this bucket by use of Google Pay, etc.)
   1. Never Budget: Never has built a budget. Does not know how to start. May make poor financial decisions.
   2. Rarely Budgets: Maybe has made a budget but does not stick with it. Needs more help using a budget.
   3. Power Budgets: Makes a budget and sticks with it. Very good at tracking spend and managing expenses. 
6. USER JOURNEY: Given that this user has never budgeted, let's discuss what average spend might look like for them in a month. Note, the journey here is not necessarily exactly in order. 
   1. User receives paycheck. Assume 2x / month.
   2. User spends on various items. Uses credit card or debit card for payment. Spend includes: 
      1. Rent / mortgage and utilities 
      2. Food (groceries, restaurants and take out)
      3. Life amenities (toilet paper, kitchenware, etc.)
      4. Medical
      5. Gym
      6. Childcare 
      7. Education (either for themselves or for child; student loans, etc.)
      8. Discretionary (clothing, make up, etc.)
      9. Transportation (car, rain, ride share, bus, and airfare) 
      10. Travel (vacation for business or personal)
   3. User pays (at least portion of) bills.
7. PAINPOINTS:
   1. Cashflow: User only receives 2 paychecks / month. Living pay check to paycheck / cannot make ends meet.
   2. Frivolous Spend: User is easily distracted by ads / window shopping, etc. and spends on items they cannot afford. 
   3. Late Bills: User forgets to pay bills on time.
   4. Unaffordable Bills: User cannot afford to pay bill. 
   5. Emergency Expense: User does not have enough money to cover emergency expenses (ex. surgery or housing issue, etc.).
   6. Interest: User has racked up large credit card bills or fell behind on mortgage / loan payments. Interest rates are very high.
   7. Lost Income: User loses job or income is reduced (budget cuts, demotion, etc.). 
   8. Upcoming Expense: User wants to spend a lot of money on a big item (ex. new card, education, etc.) but cannot afford to add it to their bills.
   9. Bonus: I received an unexpected windfall (inheritance, lottery, etc.) or my annual bonus, and I don't know how to manage it properly.
8. PRIORITIZE PAIN POINTS: I will prioritize these pain points for a user. 

   1. Painpoint	Impact to User
      Cashflow	High
      Frivolous Spend	Medium
      Late Bills	Medium
      Unaffordable Bills	High
      Emergency Expense	Medium
      Interest	Medium
      Lost Income	Low
      Upcoming Expense	Low
      Bonus	Low

9. FEATURE SOLUTIONS: I will focus on features that address the highest pain points to the user.  Note, Insights already allows users to link bank accounts, so I will not list it in my solutions. 
   1. Card Cash Flow: Insight into spend across all credit and debit cards. (Provides more detail than bulk bank transactions most likely.)
   2. Expense Categories: Pie chart or graph or what average spend for month is for user by type of transaction (ex. education, personal shopping, etc.)
   3. Automated Forecast: Ability to see automated historic and forecasted spend / cash flow.
   4. Reoccuring Bill Expenses: Ability to input expenses that reoccur for the month / compare to monthly income to calculate left over discretionary. 
   5. Rank Bills: Ability to input bills for the month and get automated help with how to pay them off (i.e. tackle this one first, second, etc.)
   6. Interest Insight: Ability to input loans and line of credit into monthly calculator and calculate how much interest accrues based on sum you plan to pay. Demonstrate to user how next month's bill will be $X higher, etc. for planning. 
10. PRIOTIZE SOLUTIONS:

    1. Solution	Impact to User	Cost to Google
       Card Cash Flow	Low: Card data provides more granular detail on what spend is. Can help user identify trends but likely not as helpful as seeing themes.	Low: Plaid and Yodlee offer APIs to pull in card details. Single API integration should not be difficult. Distinguishing between card and bank accounts may be difficult. Do not want to double count transactions (ex. pay card, etc.)
       Expense Categories	Medium: Helps user see where major expenses are falling. Likely more helpful than just card insights.	Medium: Insight into spend should not be too difficult but may need to manage with banks / cards that categorize spend differently.
       Automated Forecast	Medium: Helpful for user to identify what next month looks like re. cashflow and plan.	High: Need to build data science predictive model.
       Reoccuring Bill Expense	High: Helpful to user to plan for each month / understand what money is left for discretionary (if any).	Low: Should be able to build simple model that allows user to input monthly expenses. Could make it more high tech by automating data from bank account patterns but manual build should not be difficult.
       Rank Bills	High: Assuming user has difficulty managing spend, understand which bills to tackle first is helpful.	Medium: Can build simple categories to tag bills. Will need some model that helps with automated ranking.
       Interest Insight	Low: Interest may be part of the issue as to why a month's bills are unaffordable but likely not main source of issue.	Low: Should not be too hard to calculate interest (given that Google already has calculator functions).

11. GAMIFY SOLUTION: Given the prioritization, I'd focus first reoccuring bill expense management feature. 
    1. In order to gamify this solution, we could create a point / star system for the user (similar to Bing or an online eCommerce store that rewards users points). 
    2. The user could receive points every time they:
       1. Log in
       2. link bank account (already exists in Insights)
       3. Create monthly budget
       4. Stick to budget / positive cash flow (bonus points)
    3. These points could be used to trade in for gift cards to online stores or Visa / AXP gift cards to help pay bills. They could also be used for discounts on Google items: ex. 10% of Nest, etc.
12. METRICS:

    1. Metric	Reason
       # of users who join budget feature / month	Tells me overall success of budget app
       % change in users who use budget feature / month	Tells me how app is growing in engagement
       # of logins / month by active users	Tells me how often user is using budget / indicates how useful it is
       # complaints / month re. budget	Tells me where there are bugs that need to be fixed
       # of complaints successfully closed / addressed each month	Tells me how we're doing at solving customer issues
       % change in complaints / month re. budget	Tells me whether team is doing a good job at addressing complaints overall (ideally we want to see fewer complaints each month)

13. POTENTIAL PROBLEMS / RISKS: 
    1. Acquisition: For people who have never budgeted, we need to see how many use Google Pay. It will likely be easier to get people who already use Google Pay to use a new budget feature. 
    2. Data Sharing / Account Linkage: Users may feel uncomfortable providing Google with their data - particularly bank account information. (Biggest issue with insights tool.) 
    3. Budget Use: Users may not use the monthly budget feature or may be tired of manually inputting expenses into budget unless Google can automate that pull. 
    4. Budget Adherence: Users may not adhere to the monthly budget they created. 
14. SUMMARY: I will be creating a budget for Google Pay that begins with a monthly reoccuring bill feature that allows users to input their reoccuring expenses each month and help them manage expenses.

Attack this product improvement PM interview question by asking clarifying questions. Then, move on from there.

Clarifying questions

• By Google Pay, we mean Google Pay in India, the UPI-based payments app and not the US-based payments app, correct? Yes.
• By budgeting, we mean monthly expense budgets for specific categories and not one-off cases like budgeting for an event, etc. correct? Yes.
• Google Pay has two kinds of users - end users and merchants. Who are we focused on? End users.
• What's the business goal? To improve user experience, make Google Pay a daily habit product so that people associate finance or money with Google Pay, and also to get a fair idea on how much an individual spends on each category (but then Google already has a lot of this info via Gmail, etc.)

Identifying users

Primary target audience is likely to be young Indians with significant disposable incomes for whom the need for a budgeting tool is quite high. These Indians maybe single or married (with or without kids). They're likely to be in Tier 1 or 2 cities with the propensity to use digital payment methods.

User goals

• I want to be financially disciplined
• I want to save money for the future
• I want to know where my money is being spent
• I want to be rewarded for being financially disciplined

Jobs to be done

• Set monthly budgets per category (including one time expenses)
• Pay bills and other recurring liabilities on time
• Track expenses daily
• Save a certain amount every month
• Loan money to and reclaimed loaned money from friends
• Split expenses with a friend or roommates
• (For couples) Know what partner is spending on
• (For couples) Save together for big goals (home, kids' education, etc.)

User journey

• Set a budget for each item
• Pay monthly bills and recurring liabilities
• Spend money
  • Track expense
• Save money
• Do weekly and monthly audits of expenses

Current solutions

• Budgeting apps
• Expense tracker apps
• Excel sheets
• Physical notebooks

Pain points

• Expense trackers don't allow you set category-specific budgets
• Excel sheets are hard to fill and the discipline is difficult to instil
• Cash expenses are difficult to track
• Usually forget how much money is in each mode (bank a/c, cash, wallets, etc.)

 

 

Must solve

• Monthly budget setup
• Know balances in bank, wallet, etc.
• Track cash expenses
• Track all expenses

Could innovate

• Being financially disciplined
• Saving money
• Know what partner is spending

Ignore

• Loan or claim money
• Split expenses with friends

Solutions

Help me budget everything

• AI + Human input based budget assistant that pulls in my previous spends, categorizes them, suggests how much I set as a budget for each category.
• Automatically pull in my repeat spends like rent, bill payments, etc. and account that into monthly spending.
• Allow me to set one-time expenses that I can budget for (specific events, trips, etc.)

Track all my household expenses

• Allow me to setup a Family within Google Pay where all our expenses and incomes are collectively tracked under one ambit.
• SMS based inflow / outflow tracker for tracking digital spends that Google tags automatically or I tag with a couple of taps.
• Google Assistant integration for easily adding cash payments

Reward me for being financially disciplined

• Gamify the process of budgeting and staying within budget with Streaks and Anonymous Leaderboards (based on age group, salary, city, etc.)
• Collect points for every rupee kept under budget that can be redeemed somehow (quicker loan processing, line of credit, etc.)

Help me save money for the future

• Monthly saver that asks me what I want to save for (an Eurotrip, end of year vacation, a home, etc.), asks me for a time horizon (3mo, 9mo, 10y), and sets a goal chunked down to how much I need to save this month.
• Helps me select the right financial products to invest in and facilitates the transaction right within Google Pay depending on my time horizon, risk appetite, etc.

Wrap-up

The feature we propose has four components - a smart budgeting tool that uses AI to help setup budgets at the beginning of every month, an expense tracker that ensures I'm staying within budget by automatically tracking whatever I spend on my card (and allowing me to add details about whatever I spend as cash, via Assistant or within the app), a gamified system that lets me win points when I'm financially disciplined, and has an automated piggy bank that saves money for different goals on my behalf.

Metrics

The metrics I'd track on this are:

 

 

• Number of people who setup budgets every month
• Number of people who check their leaderboards every week
• Number of people whose financial discipline improves over time

For a product like Google pay that has likely a success metric of Transaction volume or number of transactions or amount per transaction, budgeting features may be counter-intuitive because the feature will likely impact the core metrics. But, Google usually takes a noble approach in its products. With that, I am thinking that it wants to provide a user with deeper insights into spent and budget for personal events. So, with this Google pay is likely improving the "engagement" with the app. Engagement here is defined as opening the app. Given the nature of the product, it is not a daily usage product but likely a weekly or monthly usage product. So, the success metric is an increase in WAU or MAU. By engaging more with the app, users will likely use Google Pay more paying for services (increase in transaction volume). The trade-off is that it can reduce the transaction volume if users get more conscious of spending. A/B test is the way to go.

Below are some customer needs:

1. As someone who wants to control my spending, I would like to see where I am spending the most (restaurants, subscriptions..)

2. As someone who wants to control my spending, I would like to be informed when my next subscriptions are going to get charged

3. As someone who wants to budget for some personal event (wedding, house purchase), I want to see how much is my spent overall and how will it take to save up the money for the personal event

4. As someone who wants needs social validation I would like to see how much I spend compared to other users like myself (demographics, net worth, goals..)

Prioritization:

Prioritize the use cases based on constraints - i) dev resources ii) value of the feature that will drive the metric for success iii) confidence level in the feature. Based on the value I feel like 3) is the best use case. 1) is something that users can get from credit cards. 2) is a smaller use as not everyone has subscription services 4) I am ranking personal motivation for budgeting than social validation.

The use case I going to prioritize is users setting a target for budget and achieve their budget goals by analyzing the spent and income.