Letting Messaging App Users Pin What Matters: Feature Design

You are a product manager at the company behind a messaging app like WhatsApp. Design a pinning feature for the app. Decide what users should be able to pin and why, who the feature is mainly for, how it should behave, and how you would measure whether it works. ```hint Find what gets buried List what a busy user loses track of in the app, both in the list of conversations and inside a single conversation, before deciding what a pin should attach to. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Should users be able to pin whole conversations in the chat list, individual messages inside a conversation, or both? - In a group, should a pin be private to the person who sets it or visible to every member? - Is the aim to help people find things faster, or to keep them engaged with particular conversations? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A clear goal for pinning and the user problem behind it - Segments compared, with one chosen and a justified decision on what can be pinned - Detailed behavior: limits, ordering, who can pin in groups, visibility, expiry and syncing across devices - Prioritized solutions plus edge cases such as deleted or disappearing messages and people leaving a group - A primary metric with guardrails ### Follow-up Questions - How many pins would you allow, and how would you use data to settle that limit? - How would shared pins work under end-to-end encryption and across a person's phone and computer? - How would you stop pins from being used to push spam in large groups?