Interview Question: Design a product for malls

1. Assumptions

No constraints

2. Product landscape and motivation

Competitors / subs

  • FB / whatsapp / reddit / youtube / text groups
  • Gardening specific apps - Planta, Greg, PlantSnap, PictureThis
  • Offline gardening clubs
  • Professional gardeners / botanists
  • Gardening shops

Strengths: 3B DAPs, data, advertisers

Weaknesses: lots of different sub products so CAC might be high

Opportunities: Certain people are probably very into gardening

Threats: Could cannibalize other meta products or confuse users

Company Mission: Build the future of human connection and the technology that makes it possible

Product Mission: Help people connect with others via their gardening interest

  • Gardening is complex
  • Lots of tribal, offline knowledge that could be brought online
  • Gardeners can be extremely passionate allowing them to connect more deeply with others

3. Customer segments

Personal Gardeners

  • Have garden but use gardener
  • Hobbyists
  • Enthusiasts - going to be most likely to find and engage strongly and tell their friends about gardening products

Professional Gardeners

  • Private gardener (For individuals; For companies/ parks)
  • Botanists

Gardening supply companies

  • Seeds
  • Soil
  • Tools
  • Education

Garden business owners

  • Farmers
  • Public gardens

4. Pain points

Education - lot to learn and can be overwhelming; >>> not a lot of solutions from trusted people today

  • Learning about plant care; Lots of tribal knowledge
  • Planning garden layout
  • Identifying plant problems

Finding supplies

  • Finding rare seeds can be challenging
  • Recommendations on what tools to buy; everything on amazon has 4 star reviews

Finding professional help

  • Finding an affordable local gardener can be hard
  • Sharing gardeners could provide reduce costs due to reduced drive time but hard to find people outside of your friend network

Maintaining garden

  • Very time consuming
  • Physically hard

Showing off to friends - finding people that care and not blasting others >>> pain not that severe since they can already do this with groups

  • Want to send pictures to people that actually appreciate it
  • Want to discuss and ask questions with interested and knowledgeable people that want to see it

5. Solutions

Plantino - Vivino for gardening. User can take picture of a plant and app will determine what it is and then pull up useful information about it. Can save plants to your favorites, create a section for “in my garden” vs “wishlist” or “interest list” and share ideas with friends

PlantCity - SimCity for gardening. Can create a personal garden and then expand your gardening to a professional career while overcoming obstacles (e.g., bugs, bad weather, deer). Can have leaderboards and can play with friends.

GardenFluencers - People can share their gardening secrets online with friends or in public. Others can rate their tips and them. Top gardeners earn special status.

AR/VR GardenPlanner - App that helps individuals plan their garden and visually see what their garden will look like in their own space. User can input their geographic location to get AI recommendations on what to plant with a create garden option. Can share gardens with friends or see others gardens remotely.

Plant Health Scanner - Use computer vision to diagnose issues (e.g., yellowing leaves, pests)

Social Garden Journal - Users log updates/photos and share progress with friends or groups.

6. Evaluate

Reco: AR/VR - highly aligned with Meta's long term vision for a “meta-verse” and is a un-served and good use case without a lot of competition

Pre-mortem: People use it when they are setting up their garden but then disengage afterwards since they don't change out their plants that frequently

7. MVP

AR/VR Garden Planner

P0

  • Phone upload: upload your garden into the garden-verse with camera phone; app will identify which plants are which and provide information about each plant including how to take care of it
  • Create a section for "in my garden" vs "wishlist" or "interest list"
  • Can add new plants to your garden and then see what they would look like in your actual garden with your phone in AR or by using the meta-verse and your Oculus

P1

  • Can share gardens and ideas with friends and tour other people's gardens as well as famous gardens (e.g., NYC botanical garden)
  • Can create friend group of other gardeners
  • News feed just for your gardening group
  • Set up “baby cam” for garden to monitor remotely
  • Daily/weekly plant log with reminders

P2

  • System will detect plant health when you scan it

Northstar Success Metric - DAUs, Hours spent in gardening app

Guardrail Metrics

  • Negative impact on DAUs, engagement in other meta products
  • Retention rate by DAU and by hours spent per DAU