Create a Google Product for Disaster Preparedness, Response and Recovery
Company: Google
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
You are a product manager at Google and have been asked to design a product that helps manage disasters. You can draw on anything Google has: its products, data, infrastructure and partnerships. Explain whom the product serves, which problems it solves, what its first version includes and how you would measure whether it works.
```hint Narrow the problem first
Disasters differ by type, by phase (preparing, warning, responding, recovering) and by who needs help. Choose the combination where Google's reach and data would change outcomes the most, and say why before designing anything.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- Should the product focus on fast-onset events such as floods, wildfires and earthquakes, or on slower ones such as heat waves and droughts?
- Which phase matters most: preparation, early warning and evacuation, the immediate response, or long-term recovery?
- Is the primary user the public in the affected area, or emergency managers, first responders and relief organizations?
- Is the product expected to earn revenue, or is it judged purely on public benefit and trust?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- A clear scope choice (disaster type, phase and user) justified by the severity of need and by assets only Google has.
- Pain points of the chosen users mapped to features that build on existing Google capabilities, prioritized into a first version.
- How the product works with official authorities, whose warnings come first and are never contradicted.
- Success metrics tied to outcomes such as people reaching safety, with guardrails for false alarms and harmful guidance.
- Risks around accuracy, connectivity, privacy, equal access and misinformation.
### Follow-up Questions
- Your evacuation routing sends thousands of people onto the same highway, which then jams. How do you stop the product from making things worse?
- How would the product still help people whose phones have lost data connectivity, or who do not have a smartphone?
- How would you measure lives saved or harm avoided when you cannot run an A/B test during a disaster?
Overview: A product design question asking how you would build a disaster management product using Google's products, data and infrastructure. It tests scoping by hazard, phase and user, mapping pain points to features that use Google's strengths, working alongside official authorities, and defining outcome metrics with guardrails.