Product Design: Launching a Reader App for a Publisher's Newspaper
Company: Microsoft
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
You are a product manager at a media company that publishes a newspaper. The CEO has asked you to create an app for the paper. How would you approach the request, and what would you build?
Cover whom the app is for, what problem it solves for them, what goes into the first version, and how you would know it is succeeding. Nothing is given about the paper's audience, its current digital presence or what the CEO hopes the app will achieve, so ask about those points or state your assumptions.
```hint Start from whose habit
Before listing features, work out which readers' daily routine the app should win and why an app would serve them better than the paper's website.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- What is the main outcome the CEO wants from the app: more readers, more paying digital subscribers, keeping print readers as print declines, or advertising revenue?
- Does the newspaper already have a website, a paywall or a digital edition, or will the app be its first digital product?
- Is it a national, regional or local paper, and what does its current readership look like in age and in print versus online reading?
- Are there constraints on platforms, budget, team size or launch date?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- A goal for the app tied to how a newspaper makes money (subscriptions, advertising, audience reach), and an honest view of whether an app is the right vehicle compared with improving the website.
- Reader segments, such as loyal print subscribers, casual readers arriving from search or social, and local-news followers, with one chosen and justified.
- The chosen readers' pain points and a prioritized launch feature set with explicit cuts.
- Success metrics: a north star linked to the goal, supporting engagement and business metrics, and guardrails such as print cancellations and ad experience.
- Risks and trade-offs: cannibalizing print, where the paywall sits, the newsroom's workload, and competition from news aggregators.
### Follow-up Questions
- The CEO worries the app will pull readers away from the print edition, which still earns most of the revenue. How would you respond?
- How would you decide where the paywall sits in the app and how much a non-subscriber can read for free?
- Six months after launch, downloads look healthy but weekly use among people who installed the app is low. What would you investigate first?
Overview: A product design case in which a media company's CEO asks the PM to build an app for its newspaper. It tests questioning the goal behind the request, choosing a reader segment, prioritizing launch features, weighing print cannibalization and paywall trade-offs, and defining success metrics.