Sequencing Indoor Wayfinding Features for Google Maps in Airports and Malls

You are a product manager on Google Maps. Suppose Google decides to extend Maps beyond getting people to a building's entrance and into guiding them inside two kinds of large indoor venues: shopping malls and airports. How would you prioritize the features for this indoor navigation expansion? Explain which users you would serve, which features you would consider, the order in which you would build them and why, and how you would measure success. ```hint Two venues, different stakes A traveler hurrying to a gate and a shopper looking for a store want different things from the same indoor map. Work out what both depend on, and which venue's needs justify going first. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Must the first release cover both malls and airports, or can one venue type go first while the other follows? - Is the main objective making Maps more useful to travelers and shoppers, deepening engagement with Maps, or opening new revenue from businesses inside these venues? - Can we rely on partnerships with airport and mall operators for floor plans and live information such as security wait times, or must Google gather the data itself? - Is there a time frame for the roadmap, such as a first year? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A goal for the expansion and a choice of primary user (air travelers, mall shoppers, or the operators and merchants inside venues), with reasons - Pain points specific to indoor wayfinding: an unreliable location signal indoors, multiple floors, time pressure at airports, and finding stores and amenities in malls - A feature list that separates the foundations everything depends on (floor maps, indoor positioning, venue data) from the features built on top - An explicit prioritization method weighing user value, reach, feasibility and dependencies, ending in a sequenced roadmap - Success metrics with guardrails for accuracy, privacy and trust, plus risks such as stale venue data ### Follow-up Questions - If indoor location accuracy turned out to be poor in half of the launch venues, how would you change the roadmap? - How should the product handle a gate change that happens while a traveler is following its directions? - Where would ads or promoted stores fit, and how would you keep them from undermining trust in time-sensitive directions?