Strategy question
Users often start a task on mobile and expect to continue it later on web, but today the experience feels fragmented. How would you define the cross-device product direction, decide what state and context must persist, and prioritize the first release across iOS, Android, web, and backend teams?
- Perplexity
- Strategy
- Hard
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What this question tests
Tests defining a cross-device product direction: what state must persist, and how to sequence a first release across iOS, Android, web, and backend teams.
How to approach it
- Define what 'continuing' actually requires: task state, conversation history, and any in-progress agent actions, not just a bookmark to the original query.
- Prioritize conversation history and task state as the minimum viable persistence layer, since without it, cross-device continuation feels broken regardless of UI polish.
- Sequence the backend work first, a shared session-state store accessible from any client, since every platform team depends on it.
- Sequence a single platform's UI second, likely web-to-mobile handoff first if that is the most common observed transition, rather than building all three UIs simultaneously.
- Define success narrowly for v1: a user can resume an exact conversation state on a second device with no lost context, not full real-time sync across devices.
- Expand to full real-time multi-device sync only after the async resume experience proves valuable, to avoid over-building before validating demand.
What a strong answer includes
- Prioritizes the shared backend state layer first, correctly recognizing every client team depends on it before their UI work can matter.
- Scopes v1 to async resume, not full real-time sync, avoiding an expensive build before validating user demand.
- Sequences the first UI investment around the most common observed transition rather than building three platforms at once.
Common mistakes
- Building three platform UIs in parallel before the shared backend state layer exists.
- Scoping v1 as full real-time sync instead of validating with simpler async resume first.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you decide which platform transition to build first if usage data is limited?
- What would trigger you to invest in full real-time sync?
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Learn the skill behind it
Chapters of the AI PM course that teach what this question tests.
- Chapter 4: Discovering and Sizing AI Opportunities
- Chapter 9: Measuring AI Product Economics
- Chapter 14: Interviewing for AI PM Roles