Take‑Home Planning Prompt: Predict Target Users in 6 Hours

Context

You have a 6‑hour take‑home assignment to plan how you would predict a product’s target users. You believe a thorough solution would take 24+ hours, so you must scope for maximum impact within 6 hours and communicate what you will deliver and what you will defer.

Task

Produce a written plan (≤1 page) that you would send to the hiring manager and business partner before starting. Include:

1. A crisp problem statement, success criteria, and explicit non‑goals.
2. A prioritized work breakdown with specific deliverables you will complete in 6 hours and what you will defer.
3. The minimum data you need and the clarifying questions you would ask up front.
4. Risks (e.g., label ambiguity, leakage, class imbalance) and your mitigations.
5. The exact storyboard of your presentation (titles of slides and key figures).
6. How you will defend trade‑offs in Q&A if challenged on not exploring an attractive but out‑of‑scope idea (e.g., feature learning or causal inference). Be specific about how you will demonstrate impact with limited time, and how you will measure whether your chosen scope was correct after the fact.