Data Plan for Diagnosing an Engagement Metric That Falls 10% Every Month

Engagement with the product you own has been dropping by roughly 10% every month. The interviewer wants to know which data and metrics you would look at to understand why, and in what order you would look at them. ```hint Two questions before the why Split the investigation into "is this decline real?" and "where exactly is it concentrated?" before you start listing possible causes. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Which product is it, and what is the engagement metric: a count of active users, a per-user average such as sessions or time spent, or a ratio such as daily over monthly actives? - How many consecutive months has the decline lasted, and did it start as a sudden step or a gradual slide? - Is the drop visible on every platform and in every market, or was it first noticed in one dashboard or region? - Have related numbers such as total sessions, sign-ups or revenue moved in the same direction? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A precise definition of the engagement metric and what a repeated 10% monthly decline adds up to over several months - How you would establish that the decline is real rather than an artifact of tracking or metric definitions - A breakdown of the metric and of the user base that narrows down where the loss sits - Internal and external factors lined up against the timing of the decline, each with the data source that would test it - A prioritized order of investigation and the result that would confirm or rule out each hypothesis ### Follow-up Questions - Every segment you check looks flat, yet the overall figure keeps falling. What could explain that, and how would you demonstrate it? - If the cause turns out to be a competitor winning your users, what data would show which users are most at risk? - Once you have found the cause and shipped a fix, how would you decide whether the fix worked?