Design a Maps Address Search Bar
Company: Uber
Role: Data Scientist
Category: Analytics & Experimentation
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Onsite
Design the search experience for a map application's address bar, similar to the search box in Google Maps.
The system should handle multiple user intents and input types, including:
- Exact street addresses.
- Place or business names.
- Fuzzy matches and partial queries.
- Typographical errors.
- Location-aware results based on the user's current location or map viewport.
- Ranking by relevance, distance, and popularity.
Describe the end-to-end product and data science design. Include candidate generation, ranking, metrics, experimentation, bias and failure modes, and how you would evaluate whether the search bar improves the user experience.
Overview: This question evaluates proficiency in data science and product design for search systems, including query interpretation, candidate generation, relevance and distance-based ranking, typo tolerance, geospatial reasoning, metrics, experimentation, and bias and failure-mode analysis.
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