OpenTable Product Design: Improving the Diner Journey After a Table Is Reserved
Company: DoorDash
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
You are a product manager working on OpenTable, the online restaurant reservation service. Design a product that improves the diner's experience after a reservation has been made. Explain which users and which moments after booking you would focus on, the problems you would solve, the solution you would build first, and how you would measure success.
```hint Map the time after booking
Break the period after a reservation into moments, from the confirmation to the day of the meal to after the bill, and ask where diners and restaurants each feel the most friction.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- Does "after booking" end when the diner arrives at the restaurant, or does it include the meal itself, paying, and what happens after the meal?
- Are we designing for the diner who made the booking, the guests joining them, the restaurant, or all three?
- Is there a business goal to favor, such as fewer no-shows for restaurants, more repeat bookings, or more diners using the app?
- Should the solution work within the app and its messages alone, or may it depend on restaurants adopting new tools?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- A map of the post-booking journey and a reasoned choice of which user and which moments to focus on.
- Pain points specific to reservations, such as changing plans, coordinating guests, running late and no-shows, from both the diner's and the restaurant's point of view.
- Prioritized solutions with a clear first version and what it needs from restaurants.
- Success metrics such as reservations honored as booked, with guardrails on notification fatigue and restaurant workload.
- Risks and trade-offs, including the effect of making cancellation easier.
### Follow-up Questions
- Restaurants complain that one-tap cancellation leads to more cancellations. How do you respond?
- How would you turn guests invited to a reservation into new OpenTable users without spamming them?
- If you could pick only one metric to prove the product worked, which would it be and why?
Overview: A product design question from a DoorDash product manager interview about improving what OpenTable diners experience after they reserve a table. It tests journey mapping, choosing a target user, pain points for diners and restaurants, prioritizing a first version and defining success metrics.