Product design question
How would you incorporate stories into Instagram Explore?
Practice this question out loud. An AI interviewer asks it, follows up like a real interviewer would, and scores your answer. Type or speak.
Start a mock interview on this question · Mock interview from a job description
What this question tests
Tests product design within an existing feature surface: integrating one Instagram feature into another without duplicating functionality.
How to approach it
- Clarify Explore's job: surfacing new, relevant content from accounts a user does not yet follow, based on interest signals.
- Clarify Stories' nature: ephemeral, 24 hour vertical content, distinct from Explore's evergreen grid of posts and reels.
- Define the integration point: surfacing relevant Stories from non followed accounts within Explore, not just permanent posts.
- Address discovery logic: rank candidate Stories by topic relevance and recency, since Stories expire quickly.
- Define success: tap through rate on surfaced Stories and resulting follow rate of the account.
- Confirm with the interviewer whether this is a dedicated Explore Stories row or interspersed within the existing grid.
What a strong answer includes
- Proposes a dedicated horizontal Stories row at the top of Explore, similar to the main feed's Stories tray, surfacing non followed accounts by topic relevance.
- Addresses the expiry constraint explicitly, ranking by a combination of freshness and topic match since stale Stories waste the surface.
- Adds a lightweight follow prompt after viewing a surfaced Story, since discovery should convert into ongoing relationship, not one time views.
- Sets a concrete success metric, for example follow conversion rate from Explore surfaced Stories versus Explore's existing post based discovery.
Common mistakes
- Ignoring Stories' 24 hour expiry, which changes ranking logic compared to permanent Explore content.
- Proposing a feature that duplicates the main Stories tray instead of adding real discovery value.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you avoid this becoming a second, redundant Stories tray?
- How would you rank which non followed accounts' Stories to show?
More product design questions
- You’ve just joined Meta and have been tasked with launching a new product to help people at home during emergencies. What would you build?Meta · Product design · Medium
- How would you improve the Facebook Timeline?Meta · Product design · Easy
- Build a volunteer product for Facebook.Meta · Product design · Medium
- Design an application launching in the US marketplace that enables patients to find doctors.Meta · Product design · Hard
- Design a washing machine for Google.Google · Product design · Hard
- How would you make WhatsApp more user-friendly for the elderly to use?Meta · Product design · Medium
More questions from these companies
Learn the skill behind it
Chapters of the AI PM course that teach what this question tests.
- Chapter 4: Discovery and strategy for AI products
- Chapter 7: AI UX and human oversight: design for a system that is wrong sometimes
- Chapter 14: Get the job: the AI PM interview loop