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Imagine you're a PM at Instagram. How would you design a product for finding recipes?

Asked at Meta (Facebook)
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category Product Design category Product Sense companyMeta (Facebook)
category Product Design
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Clarifying questions:

  1. Recipies - food, bakery, cocktails -> let's say any
  2. Recipies - of existing or popular dishes or new dishes that no one knows of -> any
  3. Will this feature be extended to Facebook or will just be for IG -> IG for now
  4. Time, money, resource related constraints -> none
How does IG work? Current features
  1. Posts pictures, videos, stories
  2. Be tagged in other's pictures, videos, stories (permission driven)
  3. users can follow other users and be followed -> can see the IG posts of the users they follow; can't see what other activity the user (that they follow) is doing
  4. People can like, comment and save the "following" users posts
  5. Shop feature 
  6. Search feature - search content by selecting categories/ just type or #tags - videos and photos -> usually see top pages, accounts, tags, places
  7. Reels - mainly IGTV videos 
Motivation

Mission - keep people socially connected

Vision - make facebook a one-stop shop for people to use the platform to discover their connections and whatever that interests them

Why is FB/IG interested - just like Facebook/IG , food connects people of all kinds; brings communities and culture together. Whether it is students eating in their doms or college campus, to people eating fries or drinking cocktails at a pub or bar, or couples going to fine dinig restraunts on date nights, it builds an emotional and a social connection between people. Thanks to Covid, people were in lockdown, the food industry grew - whether it was deliverying fresh groceries, food from restraunts or people experimenting with cooking irrespective of their cooking levels. 

Goal
Business goal of this feature - more engagement (short term), retention (med), and monetization (long term). For the excerise , I'll focus on the engagement
 
User segment:
I think recipies are also of two types - recipies of new dishes, recipies of popular dishes. I think of them as separate because popular dishes may have more than one recipie (with little variations), whereas new dishes may have just one recipie
  1. People who need recipies
    1. novice level cooks who are tired of eating outside, so they search out recipies online
    2. Intermediary cooks who know cooking some basic dishes so are searching for recipies of popular dishes for change of taste and new dishes
    3. Expert cooks who like searching new recipies of either famous chefs, or other chefs to know what's new in the cooking world
  2. People who provide recipies
    1. Masterchefs or culnary professionals who like creating their own new dishes and their own verison of popular dishes
    2. Restraunts who like to share the recipies of their popular dishes
    3. Business trying to sell groceries and sharing common recipies cooked with their ingredients
Demography of user groups for #1
  1. Family of 4, with kids - since they easily get bored , and there are 4 mouths to feed
  2. Adults who like change
Prioritized - #1 - Intermediary cooks in a Family of 4 , with kids
Reason - this group has the most need. For a family, there are 4 mouths to feed. Everyone may have a different taste. And you may have to prepare versions of food because they're kids (making sure of spice levels, allergies, etc). The food should be healthy but intersting/appetizing. So, this group has a lot of potential of engagement (which is our goal), growth and impact. Also, Addressing problems of this user segment can help also help other demographies and user groups in #1.
 
User persona
Addison, working professional. Lives with Partner Jackie and has 2 kids Casey and Kerry aged 7 and 5. Addison and jackie have been working from home since the pandemic and prefer eating homecooked food. She is social, loves clicking pictures of the family
Cooking knowledge level - Addison is the cook of the house, knows some basic dishes which everyone enjoys. Casey is allergic to peanuts. She searches for recipies online, likes to experiment with new recipies every now and then but has to make sure to filter out recipies involving peanuts. 
Cooking frequency - 3 times for 5-6 days a week
Grocery purchase frequency - every two weeks
 
User journey and pain points (PP)
  1. Plans to cook -  talks to Jackie and kids for what do they feel like eating, browses through options in the kitchen on what to make with the groceries available
    1. PP1 - Variety of suggestions
    2. PP2 - Limitation on groceries
    3. PP3 - moods of each family member may be conflicting
    4. PP4 - coming to a common conclusion - what to cook
    5. PP5 - suggestions may not be healthy
    6. PP6 - time to cook
  2. Searches for random recipies of popular dishes that haven't been cooked till now, reads the ingredients
    1. PP1 - multiple recipies of a single dish
    2. PP2 - time to cook
    3. PP3 - may or may not have all the ingredients
  3. Selects one recipie of interest
  4. Starts cooking
    1. PP1 - took longer than the time written on the recipie
  5. Family eats together
    1. PP1 - they may not like the dish
  6. Shares the reactions, pictures, reviews of the recipie with friends, family and online
Prioritized - 1.4 -  coming to a common conclusion - what to cook. Because, at the end of the day, Addision has to decide what to cook, she wants to keep everyone and herself happy, has to ensure the health aspect, time taken etc. I think, this pain point covers other pain points in the user journey, pt 1. and if we can help in planning, the output of search and the rest of user journey will be better. In other words, addressing this pain point will have more impact and will add value to the search
 
Solutions and Prioritization
  1. Mood based recipie match - asks Addison for mood of the family, ingredients and matches recipies. Prioritization - let's score them 1-10, 10 being highest
    1. Effort - 7, needs an AI to map recipies with mood
    2. Reach - 5, family may or may not be indulged to decide
    3. Impact - 5, in case the recipie match is not satisfactory, the user may churn 
    4. Overall value - 5.3 
  2. Community recipie recommendations - other users recipies shared or recommended based on filters set by Addison
    1. effort - 5, needs to pull recipies based on filters and keywords
    2. reach - 5, family as a whole may not be engaged
    3. impact - 5, the resulting recipies may not be selected
    4. overall value - 5
  3. Family poll recipie match - gamify the experience - asks every family member questions related to what they want to eat and based on results of the poll, recommends the recipies
    1. effort - 7
    2. reach - 9
    3. impact - 9
    4. overall value - 8
Prioritized -  #3. With this solution, every family member is engaged and provides inputs. So reach, impact, value are all high. 
 
Features
  1. questionnare containing some questions such as:
    1. current mood?
    2. What do you like to eat?
    3. How hungry are you?
    4. What's your favorite dish?
    5. Spice or sweet levels
  2. Ingredient selection list (may or may not be preset by the user)
  3. Once the members fill the answers, the answers are shown to the family members anonymously and everyone now votes out of the choices that members have entered
  4. Members whose options get the most votes is declared a winner and earns a badge. In future releases, those badges can be used as points to earn levels on games or online shopping
  5. Based on the food decided, list of recipies appear on the page
  6. User selects the recipies and has the option to save the recipie for future
  7. User shares posts, pictures of the food (optional)
  8. User can comment, react on other user posts
  9. Posts displayed on user IG profile and IG newsfeed
Tradeoffs/Risks
  1. Risk - may cannablize IG Search by Categories 
  2. Tradeoffs
    1. Kids may not be on IG
    2. Privacy of the users
    3. Users may not be come to a decision, in which case they decide on cooking something totally different
    4. they may not use the recipie
Success Metrics
  1. # of saved recipies per user
  2. # of sessions per user
  3. time spent per user per session
  4. # posts per user per session
  5. # comments and reactions per person per session
  6. North Star - # of polls per person per session
  7. Counter metrics - # of users completing the questionnaire per session
 
 
 
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Things you did well

  • Clarifying questions: good job aksing questions to clarify and scope down.
  • Goal: great job linking the goal and mission together
  • User segment: good list of user segement and good job prioritizing one
  • Pain points: good job listing pain points and prioritizing it
  • Solutions: also good job listing solutions and prioritizing it
  • Risk/Trade off: you brought up valid points that the interviewer might be asking.
Areas of improvement
  • Overall, I would give high points for the effort you put in the answer but I also think it is might be too much information and take time from hitting the important points. (E.g. Creating persona for each family member might be too much information and time cosuming)
  • Your solutions are based off of features that IG does not have. To implement your solutions, uploading the recipe parts will need a whole new revamp as well. Overall your solutions all seems to need a lot of effort to implement. Something to think about.
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