Product ideas for a tiny device that locates a person precisely
Company: Google
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
Imagine a new technology: a small device, attached to a person, that can tell exactly where that person is. What applications would you design around it? Decide who you would build for and why, propose applications for them and prioritize them, and explain how you would judge whether your first product is succeeding.
```hint Ask what a phone cannot do
Before listing users, work out what precise location from a device on the body adds over the location sharing people already get from their phones, and for which people and situations that gap matters most.
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### Clarifying Questions
- How precise is "exact": good enough to tell which room, floor or spot in a crowd someone is in, and does it keep working indoors?
- Beyond reporting location, can the device do anything else, such as offer a help button, a screen or its own network connection, and how long does it run between charges?
- Is the customer the person wearing the device, or someone else who needs to find them, such as a family member or an organization?
- Are we building the device and its app ourselves, or could the capability be licensed to partners and built into their products?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- What precise location from a device on the body makes possible beyond phone-based location sharing, used to judge where the device is worth adopting
- Candidate user groups and the needs precise location would serve for each, with one chosen and the reason for the choice
- Several applications for the chosen group, compared on user value, business value and effort, with a clear first bet and what comes later
- Consent from the person being located, privacy, and misuse such as covert tracking, each with concrete safeguards in the product
- A primary success metric for the first bet, with guardrails
### Follow-up Questions
- How would you stop the device from being used to track someone without their knowledge?
- Why would someone buy and keep wearing a separate device when their phone already shares location, and how would you test that before building it?
- Which application would you pursue second, and what would you need to learn from the first launch to decide?
Overview: A product sense prompt about a small device attached to a person that reports exactly where they are. The candidate must identify who would benefit, propose and prioritize applications for a chosen group, and define success metrics, testing differentiation from phone location sharing and judgment about privacy, consent and misuse.