Product design question

If YouTube wanted to personalize the Home feed for casual viewers, what approach would you take?

Practice this question out loud. An AI interviewer asks it, follows up like a real interviewer would, and scores your answer. Type or speak.

What this question tests

Ability to segment users, casual versus power viewers, and design personalization specific to that segment's behavior.

Define casual viewer: low session frequency, broad taste, less likely to subscribe or search.
Identify their pain point: Home defaults toward heavy viewer signals like subscriptions and deep watch history that casual viewers lack.
Propose leaning on lighter signals for this segment: trending content, short sessions, and category level interest.
Consider using Shorts as a low commitment discovery layer that feeds signal back into Home recommendations.
Define success: session frequency or return visit rate among low activity viewers, not just watch time.

Grounds personalization in what casual viewers actually generate: sparse but real signals like trending taps and short sessions.
Proposes Shorts as a lightweight signal gathering mechanism specifically for users without deep watch history.
Uses a segment appropriate metric, return visit rate, instead of watch time which favors already engaged users.

Applying the same recommendation logic used for power users without adjusting for sparse signal.
Optimizing for watch time, which rewards existing heavy users, not the casual segment the question asks about.

Chapters of the AI PM course that teach what this question tests.