Product Sense: Designing a Consumer App for Wine Lovers, From Segment to Metrics
Company: Meta
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
Design an app for people who drink wine. Decide which wine drinkers to build for, what problems the app solves for them, which features belong in the first version and why, and how you would measure whether the app is succeeding.
```hint Pick a person and a moment
People who drink wine range from someone grabbing a bottle on the way to dinner to a collector managing a cellar, and their problems arise at different moments. Settle on one group and the moment where they struggle most before proposing features.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- Is this a standalone app from a new company, or part of an existing business, such as a retailer or a larger consumer app, that brings its own users?
- Should the app sell wine, or only help people choose, remember and learn about it? Selling and shipping alcohol requires licenses and the rules vary by country (and, in the US, by state).
- Which country and audience should the first version target, given that it must be limited to adults of legal drinking age?
- Is the main goal engagement and retention, revenue, or something else?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- A chosen segment of wine drinkers and the reason to start there, rather than one app for everyone.
- Pain points tied to concrete moments: picking a bottle in a store, ordering from a restaurant wine list, pairing with food, remembering what was liked.
- A prioritized feature set with a clear first version and a reason for what waits.
- Success metrics for the chosen goal, with guardrails covering age checks and responsible drinking.
- Risks such as alcohol rules, recommendations for brand-new users, label-recognition coverage, and paid placement undermining trust.
### Follow-up Questions
- How would the app recommend wines to someone who has just installed it and rated nothing?
- A large wine retailer offers to pay for its bottles to appear first in recommendations. How do you respond?
- How would you grow the app in a market where advertising alcohol is tightly restricted?
Overview: A product design question asking the candidate to create an app for wine drinkers. It evaluates segmenting wine drinkers, finding pain points at moments like choosing a bottle or ordering from a wine list, prioritizing core features, and setting success metrics with responsible-drinking and legal-age guardrails.