Designing a Product That Helps People Start a New Hobby and Stick With It
Company: Meta
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
Design a product that helps people take up a hobby and develop it over time. Explain which users and which part of the hobby journey you would focus on, the problems you would solve for them, what you would build first, and how you would measure success.
```hint Where do hobbies die?
Trace the path from being curious about a hobby to doing it regularly, and look for the stage where most people give up. That stage, and the reason it happens, is a strong candidate for your focus.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- Is this a new standalone app, or something built into Meta's existing apps such as Facebook Groups or Instagram?
- Which stage of the hobby journey matters most: discovering what to try, learning the basics, improving past the beginner level, or staying motivated?
- Are any user groups in or out of scope, for example teenagers, who need extra safety protections?
- Should the product cover any hobby, including offline ones such as gardening or pottery, or a narrower set?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- A mission and goal that explain why a hobby product fits the company and what success means for users.
- A chosen user segment and hobby stage, with reasons for picking it over the alternatives.
- Specific pain points for that segment, ranked by how often they cause people to give up.
- A prioritized set of solutions with a clear first release and the reasoning behind its order.
- Success metrics centered on sustained practice, with guardrails and risks such as cold start, social pressure and safety.
### Follow-up Questions
- Early data shows people join your beginner groups but stop posting after the second week. How would you diagnose and fix this?
- How would you measure progress in hobbies that happen offline, where the app sees little of the activity?
- How could the product make money without discouraging beginners?
- Suppose the prompt instead asks for a product for hobbyists in general, with gardening as the example hobby. How would you adapt your answer now that experienced hobbyists are in scope alongside people just starting, and what would the gardening example change?
- Suppose the prompt is narrowed to a product for gardeners only. How would your segment, pain points, first release and metrics change?
Overview: A product sense question about designing a product that helps people take up a hobby and develop it over time. It tests segmenting users by hobby stage, finding why beginners give up, prioritizing a first release, and defining success metrics and risks for a hobby-building product.