Product Sense: Defining Google's In-Vehicle Experience for Drivers and Automakers

You are a Google product manager asked to create the experience people get in a connected car, meaning a vehicle with its own internet connection and software. Decide what the experience covers and who it is for, identify the problems it should solve, choose the features you would build first, and explain how you would measure whether it succeeded. ```hint Safety before screens Anything used while the car is moving competes with the road for the driver's attention. Look for drivers whose problems Google's data and services are unusually well placed to solve, and favor features that need little looking or touching. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Should this build on Google's existing car products, Android Auto (which projects a phone onto the car's screen) or Android Automotive OS with Google built in (which runs in the car itself), or start from scratch? - Is the main customer the driver, or the automaker that would ship the experience in its vehicles? - Does the experience cover only time behind the wheel, or the whole ownership cycle, including charging or refueling, maintenance and controlling the car remotely? - Is there a priority market or vehicle type, such as electric vehicles or commercial fleets? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A clear goal for Google, connected to its existing car platforms and services. - A segmentation of drivers, with automakers as a second customer, and a reasoned choice of focus. - Pain points of the chosen segment mapped to features that use Google's strengths, prioritized into a focused first version. - Driver-distraction safety built into the design, plus privacy and data-sharing choices between Google, the automaker and the driver. - Success metrics with guardrails, and the main risks with mitigations. ### Follow-up Questions - How would you test, before launch, that a new in-car feature does not increase driver distraction? - An automaker wants to keep the driver relationship and the vehicle data to itself. How do you persuade it to adopt your experience? - If the first release could include only one feature, which would it be and why?