Pinterest Product Sense: What Travel Product Would You Build for Pinners?
Company: Pinterest
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
You are a product manager at Pinterest, and you are asked to design a new feature for travel. Explain what the feature should achieve, who it serves, what you would build first and how you would know it is working.
```hint Pick a moment in the trip
A trip unfolds over weeks or months, from loose daydreaming to booking to being at the destination. Look for the point in that journey where a board of saved images stops being enough for the person.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- Should the feature live inside the current Pinterest app, built on pins and boards, or is a separate app or surface on the table?
- What matters most: deeper engagement from people already saving travel ideas, attracting new users, or a route to revenue such as travel advertising?
- Should Pinterest stay in inspiration and planning, or is booking flights, stays or activities through partners in scope?
- Is there any travel-specific capability today, or should I assume travel content lives only in ordinary pins and boards?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- A goal tied to what Pinterest is for, discovering and saving ideas to act on later, and why travel fits it.
- Distinct traveler segments mapped to stages of a trip, with one chosen and the choice justified.
- Concrete pain points for that segment, and solutions that build on Pinterest's strengths: visual content, saving, boards and recommendations.
- Prioritization of those solutions into a first version and later phases.
- Success metrics with guardrails, plus risks such as wrong or outdated place details and the privacy of travel dates.
### Follow-up Questions
- Travel advertisers want every trip board to link straight to booking. How do you weigh that against keeping the experience about inspiration and planning?
- How would you keep place details on pins accurate as restaurants close and attractions change their hours?
- Your first version gets many saves to trip boards, but few people open them during the trip itself. What does that tell you, and what would you change?
Overview: A Pinterest product sense question asking how you would design a new travel feature. It tests tying the feature to Pinterest's role as a visual discovery and saving tool, choosing a traveler segment and journey stage, prioritizing solutions into a first version, and defining success metrics, guardrails and risks.