Designing a Campus Connection Product for University Students
Company: Meta
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
You are a product manager at Meta. Design a product that helps college students build connections with one another.
```hint Choose one kind of connection
College students are many groups with different needs. Pick one segment and one moment in the college year when connecting is hardest, and design for it.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- Should this be a new standalone app, or can it live inside an existing Meta product such as Instagram, Facebook Groups or Messenger?
- Which kind of connection matters most: friendships, study partners, clubs and campus events, or professional ties with alumni?
- Should the product connect students within a single campus, or across universities?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- A goal tied to Meta's mission and a deliberate choice of student segment, with the reason for it
- Specific, ranked pain points for that segment that group chats, social feeds and club fairs leave unsolved today
- A short list of solutions narrowed to a first version, including how it overcomes the empty-network problem on each new campus
- A north-star metric about lasting connections, with guardrails for safety and well-being
- Risks such as meeting strangers in person, privacy, and verifying that users really are students
### Follow-up Questions
- How would you launch at a campus where nobody uses the product yet?
- After launch, students sign up but rarely meet the people they were matched with. What do you investigate and change?
- Inside Instagram or a standalone app: what do you gain and lose with each?
Overview: A Meta product design question that asks the candidate to create a product helping college students connect with one another. It tests segment choice, pain-point discovery, narrowing to a first version, solving the cold-start problem on each campus, and defining success and safety metrics.