How would you design an app to help people choose which cheese to buy at a grocery store?

Is this app linked to Facebook somehow or is it a startup from scratch?
- It's a startup, from scratch.
So is it a MVP we are focusing on, right?
- Yes, right.
What do you mean by grocery store? Is it local markets, or bigger ones, or even supermarkets?
- Your call.
We are talking about mobile app, right?
- Yes, preferably mobile.

Ok, so we are trying to build a mobile app focused on helping people buy cheese at markets. I am not going to focus on any type of market, because I believe you can get the cheese you want from many different places. So for now, I will keep general, ok?

2) Goal

So, because it's a brand new product, I would focus on acquisition and engagement. I think this is fair enough as we go down the road in this exercise. Does it make sense?

So, here's how I would like to approach this question:

- Talk about some user groups;

- Choose one group to focus and mention some of their pains;

- Based on that, we are going to brainstorm some solutions;

- Then, prioritize one or two solutions;

- Finally, define some success metrics;

How does that sound?

3) User Groups

Well, people buy cheese for many many reasons, therefore there are many different segments we can choose here, but here are few that I came up with:

a) Regular consumers

- People who buy cheese on a regular basis to eat with sandwiches, or as sides of other plates.

- These people tend to focus more on the relation of price and taste.

b) Cooker consumers

- People who buy cheese as ingredients to cook more elaborate foods, such as pastas or meats.

- These people tend to spend more time searching for more cheese.

c) Taster/Enjoy consumers

- People who buy cheese because they love it, so they love to taste many different products with different drinks and wines.

- Generally, they spend more on cheese, and care more about the experience altogether.

4) Pains

Well, I would like to focus on the Cooker Consumers. Ultimately, everyone needs to cook and enjoy a well-done meal. Moreover, spending more time at home because of the pandemic has provoked this desire in people. I believe this will not change in the future, so I see a lot of potential here. Is that ok?

b) Cooker consumers - Pains

Don't know what to cook at first; need to find a good recipe
- Severity low-medium: you can find easily on the web, pinterest
Need to know and find the ingredients
- Severity low: you know where to buy stuff in your city, not a problem
Need to buy the ingredients; know the price and quality
- Severity high: quality is gonna be part of the taste of the food, which is the goal of the cooker
What is the process to cook the meal and how the cheese plays out here
- Severity high: as they are not professional cookers, the how can turn out be very complex and difficult
What drinks/beverages should be served with that meal
- Severity low: it makes a difference, but overall the experience can be really good without it
Cook the meal indeed; help with that; what materials and utensils
- Severity low-medium: you can figure it out ways to cook the meal without professional or ideal utensils

Based on this assessment and our goal, I would like to focus on "Need to buy the ingredients; know the price and quality", which is part of the cooker goals - make an enjoyable food for his/her family or friends.

Any extra thoughts on that or I can proceed?

5) Solutions

Brainstorming some solutions, I could come up with the following:

App that is a giant database of cheese, informing avg prices and quality of big brands
- Impact medium: good and trustable source to find everything about cheese
- Cost medium: not so difficult to come up with a hundred or so database at first
App where you select a recipe that uses cheese, and then you can search for stores that sell that cheese nearby your location, informing prices and the brands, thus quality
- Impact high: I believe this would be very complete to the user
- Cost high: it involves gathering a lot of info to put together, and depends on stores to also inform those
App that teaches you how to select a good cheese, what are the techniques, important stuff to look at, etc
- Impact low-medium: the cooker might not be so interested in such details
- Cost low: the information is out there, so I believe it would not be so hard to get it
App that uses AI to help consumers know the quality of the cheese in the market by taking photos of it.
- Impact medium-high: well, you would know if that good is in perfect condition to be appreciated
- Cost high: very hard to set up this AI to understand cheese by photos, and deal with many different packages of cheese

Based on these evaluations, I would like to go with the first one to start with. It presents a good impact to help consumers to buy cheese and itis so hard to implement as the V1. How does it sound?

So, this solution in details would look like this:

- Customer would select the recipe that uses cheese from somewhere else;

- Later on, we could also add here a database of possible recipes just focused on cheese

- Navigate a little bit, but need to sign up to select a cheese

- Then, the customer would go this app and select the cheese he wants to know more about it

- After selecting the cheese, the app would return the most important information about it:

- Info about the cheese (nutrition facts, how it's produced, etc)

- Avg prices per brand

- Quality of brands

- Reviews of people per brand

- What fits with that cheese (drinks, type of food, etc)

- Some tips as handling the cheese in the kitchen

- Then the customer would buy the cheese in a local store or wherever

- After some days, the app would notify the customer to upload a review about the cheese, telling his/her experience

*Moreover, it could also offer a stream of revenue for Brands related to the ranking of showing the cheeses.

6) Metrics of Success

Number of apps downloaded over week
Accounts signed up vs downloads
How many cheese each customer select on avg
What information they spend more time reading
% of reviews per cheese selection

7) Trade-off

Just to mention a trade-off that comes to mind. It's hard to make sure that people who would select a cheese are going to really cook or buy that cheese in a short period of time. So, that metric (last one) might not be the best one.

8) Summarize

We tried to design an app that helps people buy cheese. We narrow down the problem to "cooker consumers", who enjoy cooking at home, tackling the pain of "knowing the price and quality of the cheese". To do that, we came up with an app that would inform price, brand quality, reviews, and tips after selecting a specific cheese. We also came up with some metrics of success to measure this initiative.

PMRotator2020 · Answer 2 · 2020-10-08T18:21:29+0000

Product design PM interview question: How would you design an app to help people choose which cheese to buy at a grocery store?

My first clarifying question before we get started is whether we are envisioning an app that is not affiliated with any particular cheese maker or cheese seller such a grocery stores, so an independent app. (Assume yes).

My second clarifying question is around our key objective for designing this app to help users. Are are looking for user satisfaction in that it delights our users and drives engagement or is something like revenue more top of mind? (Assume user satisfaction).

Great - the way I'd like to go about this is a quick discussion about this app, from there we can do a user segmentation and prioritze one, from there we can do a quick brainstorm on potential pain points and needs and prioritize one of those and then from there we can come up with a few solutions and evaluate on impact and some other metrics. I can then walk through an MVP and discuss success metrics and considerations. Does that sound good?

Alright, I think today there aren't really many great ways to go look up cheese even though there are many thousands of cheeses available with flavor complexities that are not super well understood. They also differ in richness and quality. People like to pair their cheese with other foods and wines. With that in mind, I'd like this app to be an experinece that adds a lot of value to users in the way users understand and experience cheese. It should be something users get excited about.

So, there are many types of users - (1) the average cheese enthusiast who likes to enjoy cheese and is intersted in learning more, (2) professional cheese tasting users that have a very sophisticated palate and are pick about these cheeses and (3) industrial buyers like hoteliers, restauraters, event planners etc.

I'd like to prioritise (1) the cheese enthusiast as I think it really bring a lot of people into the addressable market for the app which could help us make an impact to a large set of users. Most people know they like cheese but aren't really saavy about how cheeses may differ or good tasteful pairings that can elevate their experience Is that reasonable for you?

Getting into pain points next, let me take a second to brainstorm...

(1) Knowing what cheeses are good for what good recipes, knowing what cheese to pair with what wine

(2) How to compare and contrast between different cheeses

(3) If I'm having a potluck party, knowing what cheese might go well with what other people might be bringing

(4) what types of cheese/wines are my friends exploring and recommending, and a way to learn about or try those

Of these pain points, I think #1 is probably one of the biggest pain points, I think the others are very valid but to get started, I think #1 would be a good one to solve for most people. Does that sound good?

I will take a second to brainstorm some solutions..

(1) Having a good recommended list of cheese, food, wine mappings and allow the user to select the cheese, wine and special food ingredients to buy (static list)

(2) Allowing the user to insert the names of a few dishes or wines they are planning to have and generate a list of strongly recommended cheese pairings and buy those (more interactive)

(3) Get recommendations from friends on what cheese to try for a set of dishes/wines the user uploads to get recommendations for

(4) Based on the user's preferences, having a list of recommended cheeses to try and wines to pair with

To prioritise, I'd evalaute these on dimensions of impact to user and ease of implementation:

1 -M / H

2-H/M

3-H/M

4-H/L

Based on this evaluation trix, I'd go with 2 and have a database built out that the user can querry based on the dishes or wines they have in mind and generate an output of the recommended cheese as an MVP. I might be able ot make this more fun and engaging with recommendations on, "this might also pair well with x food" and in a next phase, onboard friends and have them add their recommendations that can then be surfaced among friends. I really like this MVP which then paves the way for cooler more fun and engaging features as well that would get the user to come back regularly to check on recommendations and be delighted regularly.

For the MVP, success metrics can be simple such as, # of users searching for cheeses weekly or monthly, and of those that search, how many come back to do more searches after closing out of the app. We could add bells and whistles to see if we are getting positive feedback and get users to rate the recommendation as well. I'd also want to measure how long people are in the app as a sign of how useful they find it.

Considerations wise, I think everyone has preferences and might disagree about recommendations. Just like amazon reviews, this might be an opportunity to gather qualitative reviews about pairings which can be useful for future users. We'd obvously need to look into our data storage capabilities.

I assumed we would have an infrastructure for buying and payments but if that does not exist, I think the user journey could be supported better by either pointing them to where they could make the purchase or add that functinoality so that the app becomes a one stop shop.

Santhosh Kumar · Answer 3 · 2021-10-10T18:43:28+0000

Approach:

1. Understand the ask better

2. Define a goal

3. Outline the user segment

4. identify the pain points/ user needs

5. Suggest app features to solve the use pain points

6. Prioritization

Clarifying question:

Candidate: Standalone or part of the existing grocery app

Interviewer: Standalong app

Candidate: US only or WW

Interviwer: WW
Candidate: Do we allow pick up and delivery of cheese or only pick up

Interviwer: Both

Goal:

There are several kinds of cheese that create cognitive burden for the customers to choose the one that is right for them in terms of health and taste, resulting in some customers abadonding the checkout. Facebook wants to help customers with their food choices and drive incremental revenue for the company.

User segment:

A.Minors

B.Tech savvy adults

C. Working class adults

D. Seniors

Prioritize the user segment:

Tech savvy adults: It is the target segment. Because they tend to use app for shopping and they also buy groceries for minors and seniors.

Pain points/ Solution

Discovery: Need to do a lot of research and spend time to find cheese that I would like

Solution: Build the profile of the customers based on their facebook activities, food that they have liked, and cheese ads that they have clicked, posts/comments/shares that are related to food, especially cheese. Accordingly, customize the catalog containing the cheese that they are more likely to buy.

Effort: Moderate, need to crawl data from other apps; Impact: High, as it saves time for customers

Nutritional value: Unlike prepackaged cheese, local cheese that are offered over the counter lack the nutritional value details and calorie count. In this media age, customers seek out healthy, to maintian the healty life style.

Solution: Build the complete set of details for the listings. In addition, add details around the health benefits of eating cheese as well as what is the right amount of cheese to eat in a day.

Effort: Moderate, need to do lab test before we get the details;

Impact: High, empowering customers with information will cut down obesity, other life style diseases.

Perfect choice: Choosing the right kind of cheese is key in preparing the receipe. Faced with myriad of options, customers struggle to identify the right one.

Solution: Partner with michellen star restraunts and famous chefs and use their inputs to build the AI model. Customer would tell the AI chot box, assistant the receipe that they plan to make and AI model would return the right kind of cheese.

Effort: High- need to intergrate the expert's suggestions into the AI model

Impact: High; will help the customers to celebrate the healthy and tasty mea;

Repeat purchase: Cheese lovers want to receive at a regular cadence automatically.

Solution: App will understand the customer buying pattern and create the intelligent recommendation system that suggest the purchase frequency for the cusotmers. Once the cusotmer approves the recommnedation it will place automatic orders.

Effort: Low, few lines of code, no interaction with external apps

Impact: Saves time

Lactose intolernace: Some people does not know if they have lactose intolerance, in case they face serious health issues when they eat the regualar cheese

Solution: It will either alert the unsuspecting first time customers about lactose intolerance condition and ask for acknowledgement before they buy the cheese. Since it is deady condition, it is worth creating this friction in the checkout experience.

Effort: low, ui changes

Impact: Saves life

Payment: Customers find it cumbersome to add payment details on one more app

Solution: Customer permitting, this app can crawl their browser history pull the payment information from their other accounts such as amazon, ebay, ios app store, play store, etc.

Effort: high, need to integrate with myriad of apps to crawl the payment data

Impact: saves time and adds convivence

Delivery: Customers want to choose the delivery that is short enough that they do not have to wait around.

Solution: App will allow the store pick up and home delivery. Delivery time window will be in 15 minutes slots.

Effort: low

Impact: high, gives customer back their time

Language: Not all customers are comfotable with english.

Preference: Cusotmers can choose the langauage of their choice.

Effort: high, need to build sohisticated natural language understanding

Impact: High, can attract non-english speakers

Prioritization

If I were to prioritize one, I would choose perfect choice option, because it is something that no else offers today. It can help to create the product differentiation