Waze Product Improvement: Pick a Driver Segment and Design a Feature
Company: Google
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
Waze is a free navigation app owned by Google. Besides turn-by-turn directions and live rerouting, it relies on its community: drivers report crashes, hazards, police and other road events, and those reports reach everyone else on the road.
As a product manager on Waze, how would you improve it? Decide what to improve and for which drivers, design the improvement and explain how you would know it worked.
```hint Build on what only Waze has
Waze's live reports come from its own drivers. Look for a group of drivers whose trips depend on fresh, local information that a map alone does not capture, and check how well Waze serves them today.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- What is the goal: winning drivers who use other navigation apps, getting current drivers to open Waze for more of their trips, more community reports, or more ad revenue?
- Google also owns Google Maps. Should the improvement sharpen what sets Waze apart, or may it overlap with what Maps already offers?
- Which drivers are in scope: everyday drivers only, or professional drivers such as rideshare and delivery workers too?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- A clear goal and an understanding of what sets Waze apart, including how the improvement relates to Google Maps.
- Driver segmentation with a justified choice of one segment.
- That segment's pain points across a trip, prioritized by frequency and by how well Waze's community data can solve them.
- A prioritized solution with a scoped first version, with attention to driver distraction and data quality.
- A success metric tied to the goal, supporting metrics, and guardrails such as safety and report accuracy.
### Follow-up Questions
- If your improvement relies on drivers contributing information, how would you collect enough of it in a new city and keep it accurate as it goes stale?
- How would you make sure using or contributing to the feature does not distract drivers while the car is moving?
- How would you test the improvement when its value depends on how many nearby drivers take part?
Overview: A product improvement question for product managers: choose a goal and a driver segment for Waze, the community-powered navigation app owned by Google, and design an improvement for them. It tests segmentation, pain-point prioritization, use of crowdsourced driving data, driver safety and the choice of success metrics.