Designing and launching an end-of-year photo highlights recap in Google Photos

You are a product manager on Google Photos, and the team wants a Yearly Recap: a personalized look back at each user's photos and videos from the past year. How would you build it? ```hint Make it worth finishing Think about what would make someone watch a year-end look-back to the end and send it to a friend, and what could make the same recap painful to watch. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Is the main goal bringing existing users back, getting more people to back up their photos, or growth through people sharing their recap? - Does every eligible user get a recap automatically, or is it opt-in, and can people exclude certain people or dates from it? - Is there a fixed launch window, such as the last weeks of December, that the plan has to hit? - Must the recap work for people whose libraries have face grouping or location data turned off? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A goal for the recap and how it fits Google Photos' purpose of keeping and reliving memories - The users the recap must serve, from heavy photographers and families to light users and people who had a hard year, and what each one sees - A scoped first version: what the recap shows, how it is generated and edited, how it is shared, and what is deferred - An execution plan built around a fixed end-of-year date, generation at very large scale, and a staged launch - Success metrics with guardrails for upsetting content, privacy and sharing mistakes ### Follow-up Questions - A user's recap features a relative who died this year. What should have prevented it, and what do you do after the complaint? - The generation pipeline is two weeks behind a fixed launch date. What do you cut, and what is never cut? - Recap views are high but shares are low. What do you change for next year's edition?