Product case: getting older adults to spend more time watching Netflix
Company: Netflix
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
You are a product manager at Netflix. The goal you are given is to increase engagement time among senior citizens: older adults should end up spending more time watching. Decide how you would shape the Netflix product for this audience: exactly who you are designing for, what gets in their way today, which changes you would make and in what order, and how you would know the changes worked.
```hint Follow one viewing session
Trace an older viewer from switching on the screen to finishing a title and coming back the next day, and mark each step where the session stalls or ends early.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- Which age counts as a senior citizen here, and should the caregivers or family members who set things up for them be considered too?
- May the solution be a separate app or mode, or must it work inside the existing Netflix app, and on which devices?
- Is the aim to raise viewing time among older people who already have Netflix, or also to bring in new older subscribers?
- Is this for every market Netflix serves, or one market first?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- A precise definition of engagement time and why more of it matters to Netflix's business
- Older viewers split on something more telling than age alone, with one segment chosen and justified
- Pain points drawn from that segment's viewing journey, covering both getting to a title and wanting to watch it
- Solutions ranked with explicit criteria, including the call between a separate experience and changes to the existing one
- A primary metric with guardrails that would expose hollow gains in watch time, plus the main risks
### Follow-up Questions
- How would you run an experiment on your top feature when many older members share an account or a TV with family?
- If viewing time rose but these members renewed no more often than before, what would you conclude and what would you change?
- Which part of your plan would you drop if the content team could license no new titles for this audience?
Overview: A Netflix product design case with one stated goal: increase how long senior citizens spend watching. It tests segmenting older viewers beyond age, finding where their viewing sessions break down, ranking product changes including whether to build a separate experience, and picking an engagement metric with guardrails.