How would you improve Google Chromecast?

Great question. I’ll answer by clarifying the goal, diving into user needs, current pains, ID some solutions, and provide an implementation plan.

To clarify, when we say improve I’m going to assume that you’re interested in user engagement primarily. Ultimately, this would tie to revenue and lifetime value, but I’m going to place revenue models outside of scope and focus on methods of driving user engagement. Is this an alright assumption to make?

Touching off on chromecast for a second. Chromecast is a low-cost hardware device enabling streaming services from phone to TV. Basically, segmenting users, I see two situations for streaming content between devices: Home and Business. Home users are currently defined in a one-sided excahange as media consumers, whereas business users are keen on productivity tools and extracting the versatility of Gsuite. I’m going to focus on the user needs and solutions for home users.

Pain points for at-home users is latent consumption of media from services such as YouTube and Google Music. The paradigm shift of growth of chromecast as a tool will lie in not just enabling, but encouraging interaction with the content. Overlaying a method for interacting with online content such as showgoers with netflix for chatting with a partner at distance while watching privately or live engagement with others publically while watching at time-adjusted steps. Also provides a mechanism for audience to participate in media. Similarly, Google could improve in event promotion. All of a sudden there is a live event, why can’t I know in advance of a cool SpaceX launch or UFC fight? Why can’t I participate in the process and lead-up? Where is my FOMO.

To improve engagement along the lines of converting latent consumption to active, I would want to see Google
1). Provide recommendations for me through the week in terms of what’s coming up and on for the week. Curated content.
2). Faciliate the need to interact with content at all locations by overlaying smart communication tools private and public.
3). Allow audience participation in event based promotions that support broadcast to large screens where immersion is seen as key.

For implementation, the biggest item people are willing to pay for is engagement around live events – why people still pay $100 for pay per view and subscriptions for sports. Providing a platform for people to participate in promotion through the software platform in advance and leveraging chromecast as a way of live engagement during is where there will be the biggest chance of increased user engagement. Rolling that platform out to pre-recorded streamed content after becomes an application project where the project development is more of a linear problem making it a scalable project.

This is my first post. A few more to come before my interview in a few weeks. Open to criticism

Interesting, but before I get started, let make sure I understand the question. There are several different types of Chromecasts, but I’m assuming that this question only refers to the video Chromecasts (2.0 and Ultra), not the audio Chromecast.

OK, so Chromecast is basically a device that allows someone with a smartphone to mirror their screen to a TV. It’s almost like a low-cost bring-your-own-device competitor to Apple TV and directly competes against Roku. This is a consumer-oriented product which is especially integrated with other google streaming products like Youtube and Music, but also Netflix and other video apps.

Choose a metric:

Being both a hardware device and a software driven streaming technology, to determine how to improve it, I want to look for the largest area of opportunity. Given it’s low cost, I don’t see hardware driven sales increases being a significant source of new revenue. On the software side, I can look at how to improve it’s use. When used with google streaming services, it can drive revenue through serving ads. So that is how there is a relationship between engagement and revenue. If I were to improve it by finding a new market for it, however, we could see new sales and shortly after, an increase in engagement.

Let’s consider new markets for Chromecast:
Education
Small Business
Big Business

To enter a new market, I would focus on the one that is the least served relative to it’s need to display content on large screens. In my opinion that would be education. To measure the success of adoption in education, I would look to improve sales revenue at first and then engagement.

User Groups:

In education there are two primary users to consider:
Teachers – Want to display content for lessons
Students – Need to see content

Use cases:

For hundreds of years teachers have adopted the paradigm of having a large surface to display content for students to view. In essence, teachers need to:
Display images, videos, and presentations
Write and draw content
Erase, annotate and modify displayed content
Ensure students see the content
View students’ lessons

Students need to:
See what’s on the screen
Ask questions
Take notes

Teachers needs are unfulfilled by today’s classrooms because:
They cannot have students do the equivalent of “coming up to the board” with a projected computer screen.
They cannot use their mobile devices and move around the classroom while running a presentation
They cannot replay the lesson for absent students

Students need are unfulfilled because:
They may not be able to see the screen
They can’t take notes by looking back and forth between the screen and their notepad
The teacher might go too fast and they miss something

Some ideas for Chromecast functionality to enter this market:
A. Cast to the student devices in the classroom – ability to cast to many screens at once, especially useful when there is no large screen present.
B. Upload stream to be viewed by absent students – ability to record the stream and also capture teacher audio via mobile device.
C. Google chalkboard app with Chromecast streaming – ability for casting live drawing and writing from a mobile device. Possibly let’s multiple people draw on the chalkboard at the same time.
D. Split-screen casting – allows student to cast to master screen but keeps original content on screen as well
E. Question / Comment casting – ability for students to cast up a question/comment to the main cast

Evaluate Solutions:

To augment the core Chromecast functionality, I want to focus on the solution with the largest impact to an unfulfilled need.

Solution A. Comes with many risks, such as students only pretending to follow cast while using their mobile device. Basically having kids use mobile devices in the classroom will not be desirable by teachers. Also, strong alternatives exist with screen sharing competition. Likely discard.

Solution B. Useful when absent, but limited in usefulness beyond that. Delighter.

Solution C. Core need. Whiteboards are the largest competition here and will be tough to beat. Opportunity exists in bringing smart whiteboards to the masses.

Solution D. Delighter. This is modeled from classic classroom interactions and could add value by enriching classroom participation in the digital age.

Solution E. Delighter. Alternative of raising hand and asking question is age old practice that will need a more compelling reason to change. Could also be problematic when questions in queue are asked and answered.

Summary:

To make a compelling entry into the classroom, the best solution to pursue is the chalkboard app with chrome cast streaming. This would enrich the classroom by better organizing important teacher content which is today ephemeral. It also aligns nicely with Google’s mission to organize the world’s information. With the other existing abilities of the Chromecast and its low cost, it would be a compelling product. Also, it would pair well with the Google Classroom suite of products. There are about 150,000 schools in the US (public, private and university), so I would measure success by penetrating at least 10% of schools over one year. For those 15,000 schools, I could further segment to determine how many classrooms. With one chrome cast per classroom, I could then estimate the total number of Chromecast sales in one year. I’d divide that by 12 for a KPI to be evaluated at one month post-launch.

Me (M): First, I will find out out what the interviewer means by improve.
Interviewer (I): Assume the interviewer say user experience.
M: Should I be aware of any goals for this product/improvement
I: We want to dominate the market
M: So market share is the goal. Should I also look into pricing? Would that be an improvement aspect to consider?
I: Market share is the goal. Don’t worry about pricing for this exercise.
M: Since I’m not familiar with Chromcast, I would then go and talk about my understanding of Chromecast – A hardware device that attaches to your TV which allows an app on the phone/tablet to cast the screen of the device (video/audio) using the chrome browser app to the TV screen.
I: Yes, that is the basic functionality.
M: Is there anything else I should know about Chromecast for this exercise?
I: No, lets go with that for now.

M: I would segment the customers into two: Casual and Business.
Casual customers use Chromecast for use at home to watch movies with family
Business customers use Chromecast for projecting business presentations at conferences as well as their customer premises. Do you want me to choose one particular segment?
I: Either is fine. But would your proposals vary?
M: I would think so as the goals for business are different. There may be more security implications for the business case (B) than the casual customer (C). I will list out the pain points but classify them as for business case if it is unique to them.

Pain Points for customers:
1. User experience – easier discovery of devices. Pairing of devices. Connecting to Internet (B/C)
2. Streaming of 4K video (B/C)
3. Powerpoint and Keynote support (B)
4. Authentication support. Check what children are watching (C)
5. No available HDMI ports (C)
6. Recording streams. (C)
7. Control from Google Home (C)
8. Support purchases (C)

Classifying priority in four dimensions (Business, Customer, Technology, Risk ) (L, M, H). I have not factored in cost here for two reasons. Implementation cost for companies like Google is not a great factor as long as there are enough justifications in the other dimensions.
Solutions:
1. Setup via the phone. Use the phones WiFi and other settings to automatically send information to Chromecast. Automatic UI adjustment on serving device based on the type of casting that is being done. (H, H, M, H)
2. Better codecs and compression algorithm support, with potentially limited WiFi bandwidth that is being shared by other devices. (M, M, H, H). Risk is choppy video and having to downscale stream meaning annoyance to the customer.
3. Plugins to Powerpoint and Keynote and cast directly from pptx and keynote. (H, H, H, H) – This is risky as it potentially needs compatibility tests with other sw. Need to keep up with changes in other software
4. Allow parents to place restrictions on what is cast. Make sure that the Chromecast app on the serving device can dynamically authenticate the user requesting the cast. (L, H, M, L)
5. Software based cast. Most TVs are internet enabled. Android TVs are also available. So Chromecast software that serves the purpose of the hardware and use the TV’s resources may be a possibility. (L, H, H, H). This has potentially a lot of implications. First it may cannibalize the hardware chromecast business. But there may be technical challenges too as this needs establishing sw teams to work with TVs running other OS.
6. Automatically record on attached DVR. (L, L, H, H)
7. Ability to connect from Google home without a smartphone tablet. For example the user can say ” play youtube video Beat It, by Michael Jackson”. Automatically the TV turns on and plays the video. (H, M, M, M)
8. While casting, ability to buy interesting things shown in the video. (M, M, H, H)

Now, the original goal given by I is that Google want’s to improve market share. Therefore my highest priorities would be those expressed by Customers as H.

Therefore I would implement 1, 4,5 for Casual customers and 3 for business customers.

I would track the metrics such as improvements in Net Promoter Score as well as sales to followup on these improvements.