design and audio product for meta [Music] hey everyone welcome back to another exponent product management mock interview today we have a very exciting product sense question that we want to go through we're going to be doing this with bala and before we get started bala do you want to just introduce yourself and let the audience know like where you are right now sure thanks kevin um hi everyone my name is bala i'm a product manager at meta right now um i previously worked with amazon and morgan stanley wealth management also as a pm i personally found the exponent mock interview videos incredibly helpful during my own interview prep process so i'm very excited to be here today awesome and we did not pay bala to say that or anything it did not i confirmed awesome well i'm very happy to hear that and thanks for you know using the videos and coming back and giving back to the community i'm sure like all the people who are watching will find this super helpful so we're going to do a product sense or product design question today and this is the question i want to ask design an audio product for meta um is it okay if i take a couple minutes just to you know think about it come up with a few clarifying questions yeah of course okay um i have a few clarifying questions i'd like to go over first um is there like a specific app or surface within meta's family of apps and devices that they build that we want this to be a part of integrated into or is that more of you know strategy that i get to define as i go through this brainstorming process yeah that's a good question there's certainly a lot of products within meta's family i think i'll largely leave it up to you and you're welcome to let me know like later like why you think that's the best place to start got it sounds good um one other thing i'd like to build for the u.s marketplace just for the sake of this conversation because um you know i'm i'm more aware of the audio related trends in the us and i'm sure we can learn and expand to other locations from that does that sound okay yeah yeah this constraint is reasonable sounds great um with that i want to lay out a just a broad roadmap for how i'm going to approach this problem um and then we'll dive right in so um i like to start off with answering the question like why do we even want to build an audio product does it make sense to build an audio product um once we understand the why i will then dig into who are we building the product for um what user segments and then once we identify users use user segment um i'll then go into brainstorming a few pain points and then get into what solutions potentially can be built to alleviate some of those pain points does that sound reasonable yeah yeah i like the structure cool um with that i'll take just a few moments and come back to you with why are we even exploring building an audio product okay so a few thoughts um about the audio space overall i think audio in general has been booming um over the past two plus years um one quick stat that comes to mind is spotify which is the biggest audio streaming platform in the world i think they saw like a 50 percent increase in their paid subscribers um from 2020 march to now um so you know there's definitely a trend of consumers leaning into audio very heavily um layering layering on top of that just the fact that certain types of audio are they create really sticky habits in people what i mean by that is specifically spoken word which is podcasts books so on and so forth like these are not things people do for a day and then never come back to if if a person really engages with a certain creator or a certain type of content they they come back to it over and over again so it creates very sticky habits in people so i think overall you know given the heavy increase in consumption of audio plus the fact that it's a pretty sticky habit as we go into a post-covet world when people are going to have again lesser time at hand they're going to be you know maybe going to work or just being outside more i think audio will continue to remain very relevant and i anticipate it will continue to remain very relevant because it's one of those activities which can be like passively happening in the background where people do other things um be it picking up groceries or traveling to work or whatever that might be versus other types of media like video for example which requires more focus from you um so i think for all these reasons audio as a space in general i think very positive signals with that said i want to pause a moment to acknowledge what the mission of matter is meta meta's mission is to bring the world closer together and give people the power to build community right um so when i think of an audio product in the context of that mission the first thought that comes to mind is i think the nature of media consumption itself is such that it almost forms the foundation of how people bond together and i say that because we often find that's why that we want to consume media with the people that we love and care for and it's the vice versa is also true like we bond better with people uh who have the same kind of interests right like who watch the same kind of shows consume the same kind of podcasts books so on and so forth um so i think fundamentally um there i see like a direct connection between being able to make people feel closer to when one another bond um and allowing them to do that through an audio consumption experience if that makes sense yeah so like what you're saying is based on the positive signals in the market trends as well as the ability for audio to help people form communities it makes a lot of sense for meta to pursue this direction 100 yeah so i i think just given meta's strengths with respect to the social graph i think there's an opportunity here to actually help people come closer together and feel a sense of community through audio listening experiences yeah makes a lot of sense um super curious now to see like which users we want to focus on who we'll be designing for cool um i'll just take a few moments to think through what the you know who the players are in the ecosystem and what the segmentation of users is going to be yeah it sounds good okay broadly i think the players in the ecosystem are you know listeners creators and platforms like spotify apple itunes that host audio content and i had a bucket for like other entities who end up producing audio as a byproduct of other things they're doing like brands and movies theaters sports teams you know as a part of what they do they end up producing audio content um for the purpose of this conversation i want to focus on listeners and i say that you know acknowledging there's a lot of focus on building creator tools um for indie creators especially people you know who want to start their own podcasts whatever that might be but again for the purpose of this conversation want to focus on the listener side because i think ultimately they are the consumers and if the consumers really engage with the product then the product is successful got it so like i guess like what we're saying also is that for listeners like these are the core users that medicare's about right like we have like all these users who come they consume content photos posts um and maybe like maybe a hypothesis is that if we have the right listener base then like the creators the brands they will come at naturally 100 yep cool yeah so further digging into how i would want to segment listeners um i thought of like two ways in which i could do that one is by demographic and i do that intentionally because there's this research that comes to mind based on demographic how audio listening behaviors vary so i want to segment them by users who are teens and young adults 12 to 34 which is also the user base that meta heavily wants to you know build trust build engagement um and then there's people 35 to 55 55 and above another way to segment i think is also based on the type of audio that people consume um there's music there's spoken word which includes podcasting podcasts and books there's also live radio and the reason i segment by type of audio content is again i think there's been a huge uptick in podcast consumption specifically with an audio and we've seen that music has been losing share to spoken word within audio consumption so i also think that's an interesting trend um to keep in mind and therefore you know these are the two types of segmentation i came up with for this discussion i want to look at the intersection of users who are teens and young adults and people who listen to podcasts i do that as um you know users who are teens and young adults we've seen that i think 86 of them listen to audio actively and by actively it means um they literally listen to at least two hours of audio every day and on an average per week they listen to like 16 hours of audio so it seems to study was that from the same study that like yeah i forget like which study exactly this is but i know i've read like i've worked in alexa audio so like i've read a whole bunch of papers at some point on this topic so um it's basically the summary is you know very high audio consumption trends in that demographic and i also say podcasts because podcast has been a big bet for spotify for a lot of audio platforms and we are seeing again that when we just look at audio consumption overall that music is actually losing share to podcasts and that's not to say that the product we end up building will not be applicable or usable by users in a different demographic or users who are listening to a different kind of audio i think it's very much going to be applicable to adjacent user groups but this discussion want to focus there yeah cool um with that um i want to quickly uh maybe jot down a few pain points of this particular user segment and then i'll come back to you yeah sounds good okay um so the way i like to think of pain points is almost think of it as the user goes through the journey of discovering the product actually using the product and what they do after using the product um so in this case in the discovery phase i think one of the biggest pain points that stood out to me is um i don't get contextual or proactive recommendations for what to listen to or what to consume so the discovery process itself is uh uh it it's a lot of work for me and to find the right content so it's a lot like based on like what you actively go and search for and it's based on like like you you in the search bar exactly and i think the user group we're talking about are people with you know very short attention span lots of things to do and they're used to technology working for them so that's also why i think during the discovery phase is one of the top pain points that stood out to me um once people are actually consuming audio i think for me personally at least as an audio consumer one of my biggest pain points is it's a very isolating experience listening to audio today um i tend to get bored and lose focus very quickly when i'm in the middle of listening to a podcast or listening to book like i have to intentionally put a lot of effort to continue focusing and stay engaged with the content um the other pinpoint again for this demographic and specifically for spoken word i think is i can't really feel a personal one-on-one connection with the creators of the content and this is i know becoming increasingly important for again this demographic and especially in the context of spoken word um to to have that kind of one-on-one human connection with the creators um the other pain point um i listed here is i can't take my audio with me wherever i go like say i'm listening at home and i have to quickly go go for a run or whatever that might be i'm not able to quickly you know transition audio across devices and just take it with me wherever i'm going um it's funny i listed this because i actually built a product to solve for this when i was at alexa which is live now so i'll just put in a plug for that there but uh that was one of the you know again it it's only possible if you have an alexa enabled device so on and so forth so that's a pain point i could think of if you're consuming audio on some other device which is not alexa enabled um and then finally after i finish listening to a podcast or or an audiobook um i currently don't have an easy way to share clips or snippets from the content i just consumed with you know not the whole content but just clips that really inspired me really moved me right with my network with my friends and family um so that's another pain point that i listed um of these pain points i think i wanna um i wanna prioritize the pain point where i talked about it's it's an isolating boring experience um and also the pain point where i said i can't really share and i want to do that because i think they align really um they're really intense pain points especially as an audio consumer i think i have found that i experienced them the most and i feel like that's the biggest gap not being able to uh not having the right technology support to actually be engaged and also not being able to easily share them out more broadly um i also think they play really closely into meta's mission of um you know allowing people to feel closer to other people while they're doing activities and allowing them to feel that sense of community got it um how about like roi do you think like this is the pain point with like the most roi i think that um when you saw i have at least historically found that when you solve the pain point which has which which is most intense uh which is the most intense pain point you end up usually getting the highest roi which is highest engagement from people as a response to that so um that's one of the reasons i think these are the pain points i want to pick nice i like that i like the idea of like trying to provide the most value to the user um cool so yeah um we can go go with this and then i'm curious to see like what kind of solutions you have in mind for sure um before we get into the solutions kevin i wanted to take a moment to just um define what the vision is going to be for this product because i think that's going to then help me prioritize between different solutions so i'll take just a few moments to come up with a vision and then come back to you okay okay um we may have talked about this briefly but i think it just helps to concretely state the vision before we get into solutions even in real world um so it's just a practice i love um so the vision i have for this product is we want to help people feel closer to one another and feel a sense of community through fun and engaging audio listening experiences um and i think that lines up really well with the pain points that we've picked around isolation and wanting to share more broadly as well cool so through fun and engaging audio experiences do you do you envision this well i guess like i don't want to get into solution so let me see my question for later um i'll let you continue um i have four solutions listed here the first one i call it um communal listening or listen together and what this is going to look like is very similar to the watts together product of meta and it exists within their messenger product interface um you basically can be on a call with your friends family whoever and then start listening to something together just like you can watch something together today um the second without getting into too much details i'll quickly go through all the different solutions the second solution i have is interactive audio um the thing i had in mind while coming up with this was the netflix show black mirror where you can literally you have to be engaged as a viewer it's not a passive activity anymore you have to be engaged to say uh what happens next like do you want to do do you want to see a happen or b happen and then that actually you know it's what drives what happens next on the show so i think something similar um would be great especially for the pain point around you know feeling bored and you know feeling like it's an isolated experience and not feeling engaged enough um and this can be on top of this we can layer on like questions uh you know once every 20 minutes or so within an audiobook listening session or a podcast um listening session so that again users are engaged and then we can have leaderboards of sorts for people to actually you know tout how well they're doing on um on going through the journey of listening to a certain audiobook or a podcast etc um the other thing i had the other the third solution i had was immersive audio and what i was thinking here was obviously one the big bets meta is placing on arvr but from a customer standpoint say i'm listening to a podcast about you know something related to history um and i'm not actually traveling or whatever then i it would be really cool to have my oculus headset on to actually be transported in time back to that you know time in history um similarly if i'm listening to like calming sounds or meditative sounds which i do quite a bit um it would be really nice again to immerse myself fully in that theme of the podcast or the audiobook that i'm listening to um i get that this is not always possible when you're like on the move um but i think it's a pretty cool use case um for when someone's just um listening to a podcast but just want more immersive experiences while they're doing it nice can we dive deeper into some of these so i think i'm like really curious about like the communal listening the active listening like the immersive experience yep yep 100 so and the last solution i had was around sharing um so it's around audio sharing which again is going back to the pain point of i should be able to grab clips from whatever audio content i'm consuming and share it either with a family member friend or even more broadly through stories reels so on and so forth um with my broader instagram network or facebook network if you will um of these i wanna prioritize and dig deeper into the communal listening and the audio sharing um solutions and the reason is i think they very closely align with the mission of meta but also the product vision that we set for this particular audio product i think they make the process of listening very engaging and also not just during the process of listening but after give you something to share out more broadly with your network i also think that they meet the bar of what i call a minimum lovable product versus a minimum viable product but at the same time they balance that out with you know with these solutions we are able to move fast we're able to launch and learn and iterate and build towards the more uh high effort solutions like the interactive audio and immersive audio got it um so what would like the sort of like end-to-end solution look like if i were like a user and then i'm coming to use this product assuming it's already been fully built and shipped yep um so for the communal listening or communal audio product what i had in mind was it live alongside the watch together experience on messenger today so on messenger today once you go into a chat with someone you literally have a pop-up that you can click on that says watch together and you can pick from a number of videos you can watch and you know start watching a video together basically i think i'm envisioning a very similar experience but for audio it can be a podcast or a book to begin with but nothing stopping us from expanding to music and radio and so on um and i think the the key here is again bonding over audio consumption um and also when you're just consuming something with someone you're just more engaged than when you're doing it by yourself so that's what i was envisioning for the listen together experience um for the audio sharing experience i think we we consume audio i consume audio you know from spotify from apple itunes all of these different uh platforms but when i really run into these moments of inspiration or things that really moved me um from what i'm listening to i want to have a quick way to grab you know a clip an audio clip and share it out with maybe one person through a message but also more broadly with my network through stories and reels and a post so on and so forth so uh for that what i'm envisioning it to be is i'm on you know one of these other platforms and i there's an external app integration that allows me to then grab a clip but then share that clip out as a facebook story or share that clip out as a instagram reel or share that clip out as a post on on facebook um or send it as a message in messenger you know to my friends and family um so that's what i was envisioning for the audio sharing product nice nice um i also love the idea that these both of these are like minimum lovable products i love that idea so let's say that like you know because of bandwidth constraints or resources you can only pick one of them like which one would you prioritize i know like we've already prioritized of the four like these two i think the listen together product would you know even between these two if i had to pick one that's what i would pick and the reason i do i say that is we've already identified proved product market fit for watch together um and listen together is going to be like almost you know sitting alongside watch together so it's going to be very intuitive way of bringing users into this new feature um putting it alongside what already exists the other reason is i mean there's no easy way to do this to grab a clip today and share it out but if i absolutely wanted to i could right like i could be playing an audio clip on my computer and i could record it and share it out as a post or a bit or a story um or a real so i think there are like other ways i could do the audio sharing stuff yes there's not like an easy way to do it um so that's why i would prioritize listening together but i also think like it any product we'll build towards audio between these two will give us a good sense of how does it drive user engagement after it'll give us a lot of signals to learn from and then build towards um more engaging audio experiences makes sense yeah and i think the communal listening experience would probably drive like the vision of building community and making people feel closer together based on their interests a lot more 100 yeah closer alignment with the company's mission but also products vision nice um is there anything else you wanted to share or um if not i think like we're at a good point where we could maybe stop the mock interview and then maybe get some feedback cool i just wanted to call out there already they're also like just inherent risks with either of these all of these courses right there's external partner integrations we're talking about so we'll have to see how that works we also have to think about um we have a huge video collection on facebook watch but um my guess is not as big as of an audio collection so we'll have to think of do we want people to start uh hosting podcasts on facebook or do we want to again partner with other platforms that already host these podcasts and allow people to co-watch or you know communally listen to that content while being on meta and how it all works out so just wanted to call out like there are some inherent risks to each of these solutions but i think further research and further analysis should help us get to what's the right approach of course yeah okay cool thanks for calling other risks as well so overall great mock interview um starting from the top right i loved how you started with this framework which was like why who ping point solutions and i thought it was really strong that you inputted um the vision right before you got into actual solutioning i think that's what really separates people from like senior product from like junior product roles um i also loved how you made sure to touch on all sides of the marketplace uh you know not just the listeners but the creators you called out brands businesses anyone else who might be generating content um and throughout the the entire process i could tell that you have expertise in in in the audio space right you you mentioned like a study it probably would have been better if i could like know what study that was but i mean that's not entirely relevant but it was really good to hear that um you know you had some strong opinions about the direction and they were fueled by some study that you had uh uh looked at before i also loved how you you kind of sliced users like in a few different ways um i think you you slice them like by demographic but also just like by the behavior which was really powerful um and uh and structural wise uh when it comes to solutioning i think it's always really strong and this this goes with like presenting and at work also right like giving just people like a thin slice of of what you're going to talk about first before diving in super deep that was really helpful i think that's something that all interviewees should be doing in their interviews i mean not not just in the solution part like also in this in the users part you have users a b and c and then you go into like who the users are and then prioritizing um and then finally um i i just loved how you always tied things back to the mission back to the product vision it just really made the story feel whole um so thanks paula for your time and before we close up the video is there like any tips you want to give the viewers before we um before we start thanks kevin um just a couple of things i think um the way i enjoyed approaching these problems is how would i solve them in a real world situation right just putting on like your real product manager hat versus thinking of it as an interview situation i think really helps take the stress out helps you put on the customer hat and do what's best for customers as we always do another tip is i think really explaining your thought process as to why you're picking a certain segment why you're picking a certain certain pain point or why a certain solution is uh can go a long way because ultimately that's what interviewers are trying to gauge and it's not really about do you get to the right solution it's more of was the process was the thinking logical and does that make sense so totally yeah and i think like a really big part of product management interviews is talking about the trade-offs right like uh you you were able to cite some study to tell us why you picked a certain user and behavior um and you also went through and talked about you know like for for the product right what's the impact what's the mission we talked about roi um these are all like really important things that the interviewer will be looking for you know there isn't really like a right answer for these product design product sense questions it's just really based on like what what your approach was how did you prioritize it and it doesn't make sense all in all thank you bala for your time and for the viewers at home good luck with your upcoming product management interview thanks so much for watching don't forget to hit the like and subscribe buttons below to let us know that this video is valuable for you and of course check out hundreds more videos just like this at tryexponent.com thanks for watching and good luck on your upcoming interview [Music]