On pain points, I think there's also another tip that's actually pretty generalized for product sense or even all types of interviews - pattern recognition. Besides getting general practice when you do questions, you also start building patterns which you can draw from when you encounter a new question. For example, buying / selling antiques -> if you picked seller, the user journey steps are going to be pretty similar to a seller on Facebook Marketplace, or a gig worker. There's "setting up my contact/page", there's "getting requests", there's "going back-and-forth and ask questions and negotiate with the buyer", and then there's "executing the deal or transaction". These 4 are universally going to be a thing as a seller no matter where or what you're selling. Likewise, the pain points are going to be pretty similar. You can then layer on antique specific steps and pain points. Don't believe me and think this might only apply if the problem space is very similar? Think about someone adopting a pet through Facebook, building something for childcare, building something for volunteering, and building an app to do blood donation. I bet you at least 2-3 user journey and 70% of the pain points are similar. Your solutions might even be similar. Most of these probably involve some sort of matching feature as an obvious solution, or "trust" as a pain point. This lets you get faster when answering questions but also get better at coming up with good answers. If you've done 50-70+ questions, you should have come up with some pretty good ways to do user segments, user journey steps, pain points, and solutions. You can appropriate a lot of them across questions.
Great points! Protips: #1 I usually recommend folks to do questions across all problem spaces especially ones they might not have experienced directly because it stretches the thinking. #2 Instead of doing full questions, doing just one section say user segmentation across different problem spaces so you're drilling that.
This is incredibly helpful, thank you!! For product improvement (vs product design), how would you differently structure or approach the first section of the product sense interview? (Any chance we can see a quick video framework & example for this type of questions :))
great explanation....also the frameworks mentioned in this and other videos are also very crystal clear and simple... one request ....video on product strategy question example like "should amazon enter in smartphone market ".... thanks
Glad you found it helpful! The short answer to that question might be “no, look what happened with the Amazon Fire phone” 😂 but yess let me work on a product strategy example video
@@diannayau I would love to hear to take on this type of Strategy question. Seems like Meta is asking these questions off late - like "Should Meta enter the learning business" etc.
🙌¡Thank you Dianna! I've been watching your interview videos, from root cause analysis to product sense and even though I'm not interviewing for Meta they've all been very useful for my interview preparation.
Hi Diana, I absolutely love your content and its goldmine for any candidate preparing for PM interviews. I have one question - how to come up with the creative solutions to solve the problem and think out of box ? like for travel app you suggested to segregate users on business trip or for leisure, i am often unable to come up with such ideas.
Hi Diana. Love your videos. I've gotten this question "why does [product] work in India but not in the US?" Is this a product sense question? Can you advise how would you approach this type of question. Thank you.
interesting, never heard of that type of product question asked. To tackle it, it's possible to use parts of the product sense framework. I'd ask things like "what are the users like in India?" "What are the painpoints of these users" and my product intuition is that there are either differences in user preferences, pain points or a differing ecosystem. For example let's pretend in India healthcare is totally covered, hence a health insurance product that'd work in the US would not be needed in India.
Hi Dianna, This is so great! Would you be able to make a video like this but for Execution type interviews? I struggle with setting metrics and being super analytical. Thank you :D
Dianna, As always Thank you so much for emphasizing on the common mistakes for Product Sense/Design. Very insightful video! The only confusing part was that in the beginning of this video you referred to STRATEGY questions, but later you only focused on DESIGN... I think they are completely different, isnt it? Like referring from your previous contents, the STRATEGY question framework (ua-cam.com/video/RpAgs1z4K_0/v-deo.html) is different from the DESIGN question framework. Let me know if I am misinterpreting anything. Could you please elaborate the difference between STRATEGY and DESIGN?
Great question! The first part of the product design answer is strategic because it answers “why should this company enter this space” which you’ll see is similar to the video you linked.
On pain points, I think there's also another tip that's actually pretty generalized for product sense or even all types of interviews - pattern recognition. Besides getting general practice when you do questions, you also start building patterns which you can draw from when you encounter a new question. For example, buying / selling antiques -> if you picked seller, the user journey steps are going to be pretty similar to a seller on Facebook Marketplace, or a gig worker. There's "setting up my contact/page", there's "getting requests", there's "going back-and-forth and ask questions and negotiate with the buyer", and then there's "executing the deal or transaction". These 4 are universally going to be a thing as a seller no matter where or what you're selling. Likewise, the pain points are going to be pretty similar. You can then layer on antique specific steps and pain points.
Don't believe me and think this might only apply if the problem space is very similar? Think about someone adopting a pet through Facebook, building something for childcare, building something for volunteering, and building an app to do blood donation. I bet you at least 2-3 user journey and 70% of the pain points are similar. Your solutions might even be similar. Most of these probably involve some sort of matching feature as an obvious solution, or "trust" as a pain point.
This lets you get faster when answering questions but also get better at coming up with good answers. If you've done 50-70+ questions, you should have come up with some pretty good ways to do user segments, user journey steps, pain points, and solutions. You can appropriate a lot of them across questions.
Great points! Protips: #1 I usually recommend folks to do questions across all problem spaces especially ones they might not have experienced directly because it stretches the thinking. #2 Instead of doing full questions, doing just one section say user segmentation across different problem spaces so you're drilling that.
This is incredibly helpful, thank you!! For product improvement (vs product design), how would you differently structure or approach the first section of the product sense interview? (Any chance we can see a quick video framework & example for this type of questions :))
This is literally one of the best videos here on YT.Thanks for your efforts.
@Dianna Yau - Thank you for the wonderful video. Great timing! This is just what I wanted to do the last few fine-tuning to my framework!
Amazing! Cheering you on for your upcoming interviews
great explanation....also the frameworks mentioned in this and other videos are also very crystal clear and simple... one request ....video on product strategy question example like "should amazon enter in smartphone market ".... thanks
Glad you found it helpful! The short answer to that question might be “no, look what happened with the Amazon Fire phone” 😂 but yess let me work on a product strategy example video
@@diannayau Curiously waiting for an example of a Strategy Question! 🙂 another sample question is "What should Facebook do in the education field?"
@@diannayau I would love to hear to take on this type of Strategy question. Seems like Meta is asking these questions off late - like "Should Meta enter the learning business" etc.
🙌¡Thank you Dianna! I've been watching your interview videos, from root cause analysis to product sense and even though I'm not interviewing for Meta they've all been very useful for my interview preparation.
Hi Diana, I absolutely love your content and its goldmine for any candidate preparing for PM interviews. I have one question - how to come up with the creative solutions to solve the problem and think out of box ? like for travel app you suggested to segregate users on business trip or for leisure, i am often unable to come up with such ideas.
Thanks for the video, it's helpful! But why is the painting sitting on the back of your couch in the background?
My sincere gratitude for the wonderful work that you have been doing to educate people on Product Management. Thank you much. 😊
Finding a lot of value thank you
It just brings it home for me! Kudos to you Diana! 👏👏
Hi Diana. Love your videos. I've gotten this question "why does [product] work in India but not in the US?" Is this a product sense question? Can you advise how would you approach this type of question. Thank you.
interesting, never heard of that type of product question asked. To tackle it, it's possible to use parts of the product sense framework. I'd ask things like "what are the users like in India?" "What are the painpoints of these users" and my product intuition is that there are either differences in user preferences, pain points or a differing ecosystem. For example let's pretend in India healthcare is totally covered, hence a health insurance product that'd work in the US would not be needed in India.
@@diannayau thank you for you advise Diana. I really appreciate it.
Hi Dianna , it will be great if we can have a complete demo for the product sense interview, could we have one? Thanks!
Yess, that’s coming up in an upcoming video within the next 2 weeks!
Hi Dianna, This is so great! Would you be able to make a video like this but for Execution type interviews? I struggle with setting metrics and being super analytical. Thank you :D
Hey Kristin! Check out the other execution videos on my channel, they address some of the common mistakes for execution questions
Dianna, As always Thank you so much for emphasizing on the common mistakes for Product Sense/Design. Very insightful video!
The only confusing part was that in the beginning of this video you referred to STRATEGY questions, but later you only focused on DESIGN... I think they are completely different, isnt it? Like referring from your previous contents, the STRATEGY question framework (ua-cam.com/video/RpAgs1z4K_0/v-deo.html) is different from the DESIGN question framework. Let me know if I am misinterpreting anything.
Could you please elaborate the difference between STRATEGY and DESIGN?
Great question! The first part of the product design answer is strategic because it answers “why should this company enter this space” which you’ll see is similar to the video you linked.
@@diannayau Thank You so much 😀