Instagram as a PM design case: what to build, for whom and why
Company: Meta
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
Design Instagram, the app where people share photos and videos and keep up with the accounts they follow.
```hint Agree on the reading
This prompt can mean the user experience or the system behind it. Settle which with the interviewer, then build around one core user loop before adding features.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- Should I design it as a new product from scratch, or redesign today's app with its stories, short videos and messaging?
- Do you want the focus on users and features, on the technical architecture, or on both at a high level?
- Which goal matters most here: growing the number of users, deepening engagement, creator activity or ad revenue?
- Should I plan for a launch in one market, or for global scale from the start?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- A stated reading of the prompt and a goal, agreed before designing
- The user groups involved (viewers, posters, creators, advertisers) and a chosen group to design for first, with the reason
- A core loop and the features that serve it, prioritized with explicit cuts
- How the main flows work at a high level: uploading, storing and delivering media, and building the feed
- Success metrics with guardrails, and risks such as safety, privacy and well-being
### Follow-up Questions
- When someone follows far more accounts than they can scroll through, how would you decide what appears first, and what could go wrong?
- How does posting work differently for an account with an enormous following, and why?
- If a rival short-video app started winning your users' attention, what would you add, and how would you keep it from crowding out posts from people they know?
Overview: A product manager interview prompt asking the candidate to design Instagram, the photo and video sharing app. It tests how they clarify an open-ended prompt, choose users and a core loop, prioritize features, reason about how uploads and feeds work at scale, and define success metrics and risks.