Product Data Science - Improve Google Maps | Google Data Scientist | DataInterview

hey everyone it's dan the founder of datantv.com ex google and paypal data scientists in this video i'd like to cover a topic based on product data science into a question and the type of

question is the following how would you improve a product this is the type of question that's commonly asked in product data science interviews this is about putting yourself in the shoes of a data scientist and company that's

interviewing you and then thinking about how would you use data and extract insights that can be meaningful in the form of hey you know what i have an idea for a new future or enhancement of a

current future that can help the product grow so let's do a deep dive in terms of how do you approach this type of problem um so

i just want to first of all mention that this is the type of problem because it's um it's about how would you improve a product and so you would have a multiple companies asking similar

questions like this for instance google might ask a question about you know how would you improve um google maps and this is a fairly a fair game sort of question especially if you're

interviewing for the product analyst role at google and uber could also ask questions about you know how would you improve the user experience on ubereats you know

the difference is the key word but the essence of what is the main aim of this um this type of question is pretty much the same it's about improving the

product essentially and then the meta company or formerly known as facebook might ask a question about should facebook create stories and so you can see that this is also you know you can see that

they might also ask you a question about hey you know what um we have an idea for a new future should we actually build this or not right um but regardless of whether they actually mention a specific

product that they are or featured that they want to build out the essence of how you would approach this type of problem is pretty much the same so i

want to mention a framework a five-step framework that is useful in terms of approaching this type of problem and so the first thing is to define the goal of the problem

so this is really where you bring out you know what is the business objective and what is the product experience of this um you know of this type of problem right and then the step two is walk

through the user journey so this is really where you do like a high you know in-depth details in terms of what is the typical user journey you know what are the types of users that use this platform and what's the

user journey from the beginning to the end right as soon as they land on the website with the platform you know what kind of tasks can they achieve and what sort of

satisfaction um experiences do they do they get out of this right um and also talk about the monetization aspect of it as well um and all of these are basically a stepping stone for you to

think about um you know what are ideas that you can definitely propose to the interviewer but also at the same time you're demonstrating to the interviewer that you have product knowledge about the

company that you're interviewing for and that is really important and then the third thing is to brainstorm two to three ideas that can be really helpful right so

based on the user experience of the current platform or the future um you know can you think of ways to enhance it right um the last thing you want to do is mention something that's already there

and that can be somewhat costly because the interviewer might think you haven't really done the research in terms of the latest sort of user experience of the of the product

um so the the third step is to brainstorm two to three ideas um and then the fourth step is to validate uh ideas using data so um the last thing that you want to do is

just basically say hey you know what i have an idea for building a new future but you're not really able to back it up with data and so this is where you kind of put yourself in the shoes of a data

scientist and imagine if you have all kinds of data right and obviously you can clarify with the interviewer and ask the person hey um can i use any sort of data source or are there particular data

sources i'm sort of restricted to right and then think about you know what kind of user events can you um look into that suggest that users

want this right um and this is about finding proxy behaviors that seem to convey us a certain intent and i'll talk a little bit more about how this works um as of course like as i go through an

actual illustration in terms of how do you approach this type of problem and then the last part is you know now that you have two to three ideas and you're able to validate that hey you know people are actually using you know

wanting to use this um you have to now prioritize um the ideas based on the one that the product team should focus on right and this is really about putting yourself in the shoes of a product

manager and then kind of thinking about you know how would you actually um among these three ideas which one do you think has the highest sort of ri

um you know with kind of minimum effort right and so this is about you being able to prioritize you know what to focus on and that's a pretty typical behavior among uh you know

responsibility among data scientists um you know especially when you have all these competing ideas what do you focus on right and that's what the interviewer wants to see um so we're going to go ahead and actually

talk through this type of problem by going through this exercise um how would you improve google maps and you know why don't you actually just pause the video for just couple seconds and just kind of think about how you

might respond to this question right imagine if you're if you if you're a candidate for the product analyst role at google or if you're interviewing for any sort of product data science interview in general and you have a product sense

interview coming up um take take a moment right you know it could be a couple seconds it could be a minute or five minutes and just use the google maps open up the google maps and

just kind of go through the user experience and think about hey you know what i wish there were these features it can be really helpful that would make my life so much easier right and then think about how you respond to this as though

you were an actual candidate um so pause the video and then you know resume all right so let's do a deep dive let's apply the framework that i mentioned in this type of problem

right so the first thing is to really define the goal of the problem and so you want to what you want to definitely want want to walk through um kind of demonstrate you know some knowledge

about hey you know what i i understand what this problem is asking right um i often see as i you know coach um candidates for interviews

i might ask questions about you know how do you measure success for you know platform or how do you um you know validate whether an idea should be whether products should be built or not right

and the kennedy often have these clarifying questions and it's really important to have clarifying questions but at the same time it's important to be somewhat intelligent in terms of what questions

you're asking right like you don't want to ask questions about um you don't want to ask a clarifying questions you know oh what what do you mean by success or how do you want me to measure success

when that is a very question that that the interviewer is asking and i've often seen this type of clarifying question as in like um you know how would you like um

you know what do you mean by improving google maps right um but you don't want to you don't want to ask that when that's basically what the interviewer is asking

right um rather the way to sort of frame this is personal make start with some assumptions and then clarify to see whether you're on the right track so you can kind of lay out a couple things

right so um if i was a candidate you know responding to this my opening response was would be something on the lines of you know thank you for this question um you know i think this is very interesting

and very important because um improving google maps is about really focusing on three different areas or combination or maybe one of these areas and

i know that improving google maps can be in the form of you know improving the user experience so maybe helping them achieve a certain task um you know much quicker it could be about helping to

promote businesses and obviously businesses can promote themselves and google maps um by dropping by by letting users know that hey you know this business exists on a map but

in a form like a pen and um like a specific location and then the last thing is you know maybe it's it might be in the form of helping google um google maps generate you know advertisement revenue right

because that's one of the main advertisement stream for google maps at any time you go on the app itself and sometimes if you click a specific business you might see like an

advertisement banner in the search result and so whenever user clicks it that's um you know basically businesses that are taking out these advertisements or paying google for every click

um and so this you know it could be in that form as well or maybe there might be this sort of one idea that might help all of these three aspects right um so it's important to kind of first of all

establish you know what does it mean to improve goal improve you know improve a product here and start that as like you're clarifying assumptions right like make these assumptions and ask the interviewer you know um are there

particular areas you want me to focus on or do you just want me to kind of do like a general some exploration and then conversion to one idea that i would probably recommend to a product manager right that's how you demonstrate

expertise you don't start by asking some sort of general questions and expect the interviewer to provide hints for you um so once you have established this step the next step is

to essentially walk through the user experience right and this is something that um you know even if it's the type of app that you've often used maybe it's like

uber or instacart um or whatever it is um it's it's often easy to just kind of passively go through like what the core features are um i've used google maps often and even

for me when i'm doing this sort of research um you know in the preparation for the interview i have to pretend as though like i'm an actual like ux designer or uh or you know basically

like put it place myself in the mind of like a product manager and really deconstruct the app right um so one thing i recommend is that if you have a product data science interview coming up

right whether it's for uber whether it's for um you know google or whatever it is right um actively use the app right and

create a word doc and create an outline of hey um here's how here's what are the core functionalities of these features and here's what the user experiences are from the beginning to the end right and

that is gonna be incredibly helpful that map in your mind is gonna be incredibly helpful whenever you need to address questions like this um so um so how i would respond like you know

further build on my response would be like okay first of all i just want to walk through the user experience here because i think this is important as a stepping stone um for me to think about

what potential ideas there are right um what ideas could perhaps enhance google maps now i know that um at its core there are two types of user bases so there's the regular users like

myself the commuters who loves to navigate through uh things right like i need to go from point a to point b i need to browse places right like maybe

i'm trying to look for new eateries um like music venues to go to um maybe maybe i just want to do like a specific search right there's like a search bar i can search like um places to eat or something like that right so

those are one of the core functionalities and of course there are a lot more right um but generally just follow the rule of three like you don't want to like overwhelm the uh interview with so many things and the next thing

you know you're not really ever able to cover the main things right so just start by focusing the core functionalities um and then kind of provide some details from there right the other aspect of

of the user user group could be like businesses right so businesses can definitely establish their location on google maps so they let other people know that hey um you know this steakhouse exists in

san francisco you know maybe you should definitely check it out um and they can also take an advertisement as well right um you know as a way to promote um you know maybe

like uh like a particular service or something like that right um and i'd often see it like every time i look up like you know restaurant in the search banner i often see like advertisements from like postmates or

ubereats because they obviously have some partnerships um you know with these with these restaurants in terms of delivering you know food to consumers right and so they would

take out these advertisements um so these are the user experience these are one of the core sort of user experience on google maps and once you have demonstrated this you show that into you

show to the interviewer that hey you know the product knowledge but also at the same time um you know like this is also going to help you come up with really cool ideas

then the the third step is really the sort of like entrepreneurial side of things right this is where you have to like come up with um ideas that have been really helpful helpful for

improving google maps and so right off the bat so i can think of three ideas right and and it can really start from your own personal experience but also it can start from by saying hey you know um i

would actually do some investigation data and then kind of extract what potential behaviors users are expressing and then from there come up with some ideas that can help remove these friction points that they're suffering through right

um so there's all these different angles in which how you would approach this but in terms of like what you do afterwards it's exactly the same and i will show you what i mean by this in a second but

basically the three ideas i have are this so and i really wish google maps would actually um build it so if anyone from the google maps team is watching this um please add these features um

so the first thing is eta planning so what i mean by this is like you know how like when you're searching to like when you're trying to navigate to a place like it shows the eta in real time like the

current moment of what the eta is but what if you're doing like a plan for like a trip elsewhere right and you want to see what typical eta is um given

various time of the day right it's like i live in san francisco and sometimes i like to go to santa cruz um and like some i notice that there's a lot of variability like sometimes there's

traffic like heavy traffic on like thursday afternoon i'm like what the heck is going on like who goes to santa cruz on thursday afternoon and stuff like that and and it kind of makes you wonder like

you know it would be nice if you can kind of like look at trends right historical trends of like what the eta is like pick out a day and a time and then um and then the location and then

be able to see you know what has been the general sort of eta for this time at any point in time right and that could be really helpful for people trying to make trips like any certain commute if

especially if you move to like a new city and you want to do a little bit of exploration outside of the city or through the city um you know like that sort of look up will be incredibly

helpful and i do see that like there's some aspect of this um on google search itself whenever you search like a business um like a restaurant or something like that they do have like

these bar chart that shows like how busy um a restaurant typically gets um so i certainly wouldn't see why like google maps cannot have something like

that for eta as well and then the second thing is street parking information so how often do you drive to like an urban area like a city or a new city right and you're

struggling to find a parking spot right and you don't really want to pay for like a parking garage because they can be someone expensive especially in a city like san francisco where you're paying like 20 an hour or something like that you know

um and so a person like me would typically look for street parking but then like when you look it up on google maps like there's no information about like what are areas where i could do

street park water areas i can't if i knew that information in advance i would probably go to that street right otherwise i have to drive around and you know when you drive around san

francisco my god it's a pain in the butt there's all these runways and hills and um there's all these signs like sometimes it's comp like they kind of

conflict each other like the one sign is saying you know don't park at from four to six and then another sign is saying you know uh you're allowed to park and it's on the same street and so it's like really confusing and so it's you know

it'd be incredibly useful if google maps can help find that information right and then the third thing is you know local um this is this can be really helpful for local uh you know venues

right so i i love going to happy hours i love doing these special events that um that music like theaters and restaurants and bars hosts and stuff like that and

it'd be nice if the advertisement display that shows up in businesses um are actually from these local businesses promoting some events right and this can

be really helpful in terms of like users looking for these type of events but also venues as well to attract new customers to bring back current customers um and also it can be helpful

for google because it can help them generate advertising revenue so you start by like laying out a couple ideas right and then eventually you say okay um what i would probably do is um do

some like validation to see whether people would be using this right and so um the next step is basically you know you know validating using data right so

in terms of the eta planning like how can you validate this idea so you can look at um search histories right search routes where like users have searched

for a particular location but they did not physically move right and this could be indicative that hey you know what they're doing some planning sir right they don't want to just kind of get a

general understanding of how long it takes to actually commute somewhere right um so if there's enough volume with this type of search maybe it's indicative that hey you know what we could

definitely build out this type of feature that can be really helpful for users right and then the in terms of street parking information this could be like in the form of people who search you know who are um

basically they search for parking spots right and and they parks cars on the street instead of like a parking garage um and this could be you know this once again like look at

the volume of this type of search right um and that could be indicative of whether this whether there's potential demand for this type of future and then the last

thing is you know users who search um events like happy hours and and shows right so you can so google has a way to like track you know from people who are using like

google maps to just a regular google search as well right so so see like are there type of users who are searching for particular location or like a business and then they happen to

search like you know like uh happy hour at this restaurant called a bar called bargerack or something like that and and see and basically find that history and if

there's enough volume for that you know maybe there's um you know it's suggested that hey you know what this could be really helpful for uh you know for for the the type of users that i just

mentioned earlier um so the last thing is to prioritize which idea to build and one way to approach this is basically using this prioritization framework it's

called impact versus effort analysis and this is often used in product managers um and consultants as well and you can bring this out as a way to think about

how you would actually value which idea to focus on um you know and and that's really really powerful way to show to the interviewer

that you know you know how to basically um basically define a scope of a problem and then be able to figure out like what to focus on right

um and so this this impact versus the effort analysis basically for each idea you're evaluating whether um you know whether this has low medium

or high impact and whether it has a low medium and a high effort and ideally you want to go pursue an idea that's going

to return high impact with low effort um and as opposed to a high impact and high effort and of course there are some exceptions to that but generally you

know that's what's um you know that's what's desired right because you want something that's gonna give you the highest sort of ri you know minimum effort and maximum return and so

um so you can kind of approach each of the idea based on this and and and can say you know um based on the ma you know based on this analysis um

um i can say that you know eta planning would be low impact and low effort and and and you can and and basically you would obviously have to kind of justify in terms of why that is right so if i

were to sort of approach this like i would say like you know um so in terms of just sort of looking at the impact here like um this is how rank it so i think the eta

planning is low street parking information is medium and event planning is high even banner is high um and the reason why i ranked it this way is because um i

think that even though there are types of users who may want to do some ata planning i just don't believe that there would be high enough volume and obviously we can kind of validate it

through data um and and at the same time this is not like a must-have feature right it's it's like nice to have but it wouldn't be like the main sort of um

functionality that people would often use and so that's why i think the impact is low um i think the street parking information is definitely you know relatively speaking compared to

eta planning it's higher than low it's it'd be medium um you know because people commute a lot and you know this this type of information can be really helpful and remove a lot

of friction points for a lot of commuters out there especially if they're looking for parking spots um but i don't believe it will be as high as

the event banners right so because this not only helps users find locations or events that they want to go to but also helps businesses and especially during the pandemic time

you know as a lot of these venues are you know reopening they're they're trying to attract customers regain old customers through these um sort of happy

hours and events and so they're perhaps a really good medium a way for them to like you know um send out any sort of events that they're hosting right and so these event banners can be

incredibly helpful but at the same time it could be additional source of revenue stream for google ads so we're serving all three aspects of this and given that that's why i think the impact is impact

would be really high but in terms of the level effort that is required um i believe that eta planning is low because it doesn't really require much sort of

major revamp on the engineering besides um you know looking at historical trend and aggregating it and then you know basically storing it somewhere and displayed it on um you know on

google maps uh so there wouldn't be much kind of sort of cross-functional um you know um coordination that is required to build out this functionality now in terms of street parking information i

could definitely see it being high because you have to be able to extract information at a street by street level and sometimes that can change and um i could think of like obviously this might

require um a coordination with the with some software engineers and machine learning engineers um as a way to parse this information in the form of like

some urban database like a municipal database or like computer vision right because you know google maps um

or google earth has all these different images of you know like the street by street and they might they could perhaps extract you know what is the latest sort

of street information uh from these signposts that are on you know that are on the street um that lets them know whether a car can be parked or not right um but that kind of

effort would be um would be hard in terms of um the engineering effort that is required to build something like this um and and similar thing i would say the level effort that's required to build

out this event banner would obviously require coordination among the advertisement team um the uh basically you know attracting

like new customer like advertisers for this type of banner uh that might take some time um it it takes time to basically do a

bit of like a redesign on the um on where this type of advertising gets displayed and stuff like that so i believe that the effort itself would be fairly high um

and in terms of which one i think we should pursue is that um i think the idea should be even better because as i mentioned earlier um you know this not

only even though the effort in you know is is as high compared to like other uh features per se in terms of the impact that we're getting from this

would be really um you know really powerful for uh you know users who are browsing for venues to go to uh businesses and advertising revenue and so i think um

going pursuing this idea will be would be important and you know you just ended it with that and of course you mentioned additional sort of caveat saying um you know of course

like obviously this requires conversation with product managers and engineering managers and eventually kind of converge toward which idea to focus on and it'll be it through meetings and

kind of documentations and you would obviously flesh it out but in terms of just like the information i currently have i think this is the best idea to pursue um and so you mentioned that as a

caveat but also at the same time you're showing that you have real life experience in um and being able to um you know basically approach this type of problem and that's really what the purpose of

these interviews are so so that can be really helpful so there you have it guys you know so those are the five steps um in terms of how would you approach a

problem about improving your product now if you if you like this type of content make sure you check out datantb.com because it contains courses um contains

a b testing product cases question banks and like mock interview videos that are really helpful for your interview prep but also at the same time there's also

coaching services so you can um pair up with an instructor like myself and then i can give you like a personalized mock interview for the meta um data scientist interview google data scientist review

pretty much any data sentence interview um and so make sure you check out datantv.com and i will see you in the next video bye