Product sense case with a self-chosen industry: customer problems, solution and metrics
Company: Google
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
In a product manager interview at Google, the interviewer lets you choose the industry. Pick one, describe the main problems its customers face, design a system that addresses those problems, and explain how you would measure whether the system succeeds.
```hint Make the industry choice count
The industry you pick shapes everything after it. Choose one where you know the customers well and the problems are frequent or costly, say why you chose it, and remember that many industries have a second side, the businesses serving those customers, whose problems also decide whether a system works.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- Does "customers" mean end consumers, business buyers, or both sides when the industry works as a marketplace?
- Is a "system" a software product only, or can it include operations, people and hardware?
- Should the system be something Google could build on its existing products, or can any company build it?
- Is the aim a new business with its own revenue, or a better experience for customers of an existing player?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- A deliberate choice of industry and customer segment, with reasons for it.
- Pain points that are specific, ranked by frequency and severity, and compared with how customers cope today.
- A system design whose components map to the top pain points, covering both sides when there is a marketplace, narrowed to a focused first version.
- Success metrics with a north star tied to customer outcomes, supporting metrics, guardrails, and a plan to validate them.
- Business model, launch scope and the main risks.
### Follow-up Questions
- How would you check that the pain points you listed are real and ranked correctly before building anything?
- If customers like the system but the businesses in the industry refuse to join, what do you change?
- Which single metric would you report after three months, and what result would make you stop the project?
Overview: An open-ended product sense prompt from a Google interview where the candidate chooses an industry, identifies its customers' biggest problems, designs a system to address them and defines how to measure success. It tests segmentation, prioritization, end-to-end solution design and metric selection.