Product design: a self-guided, interactive city walking-tour experience at Google

You are a product manager at Google. Design an app that guides a person through a city on foot and makes the walk interactive and informative, not just a route on a map. Explain who it is for, what problems they have on a walking tour today, which features you would build first, and how you would measure success. ```hint Two jobs on every walk A walking tour has to get the person to the next stop and make each stop worth stopping at. Decide which users struggle most with which of those jobs, and think about what being on foot, on a street, with a phone in hand does to how they can interact with the app. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Should this be a standalone app or an experience inside Google Maps? - Is it for one specific city or for any city, and is there a launch market in mind? - What should "interactive" cover: asking questions, pointing the camera at a building, games for families, or changing the route on the fly? - Are tours self-guided only, or may the app also connect people with tours led by local guides? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A chosen user segment and the specific moments before, during and after a walk where that segment struggles - Interaction suited to walking: hands-free audio, location-triggered stories, camera identification or spoken questions, with street safety considered - A content strategy: where stories and routes come from, how accuracy is kept, and how coverage reaches beyond the most famous cities - A prioritized first version that handles offline use, battery and roaming data - A north-star metric based on completed walks, with supporting metrics and guardrails ### Follow-up Questions - How would you get good content for a mid-size city where no one has written a tour yet? - Most users start a tour but stop after two or three stops. How would you find out why? - Would you monetize the app, and how would you avoid hurting trust in its recommendations along the route?