Strategy question

You are a product manager at Facebook when Facebook Reactions was only a thumbs up, Facebook has decided to launch multiple reactions. How would you go about doing that?

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

Execution planning for rolling out a significant, emotionally sensitive UX change to a core, high-usage feature.

Clarify the goal: let users express more nuanced sentiment than a single Like, without disrupting the simplicity that makes it widely used.
Research existing user behavior: analyze comment sentiment to infer what emotional range users already express, informing which reactions to include.
Prioritize a small, well-tested set of reactions, not too many, which would slow decision-making at the point of interaction.
Design the interaction: press-and-hold to reveal reaction options, keeping the default tap behavior unchanged, minimizing disruption to muscle memory.
Roll out gradually: a limited market or user-segment test first, measuring engagement and reaction diversity before global launch.
Define success: adoption of non-default reactions and overall engagement lift, without a drop in core interaction volume during rollout.

Grounds reaction set selection in real user behavior data rather than guessing which emotions to support.
Preserves the existing tap-to-like behavior, a thoughtful detail minimizing disruption to a deeply ingrained habit.
Proposes a gradual, segmented rollout appropriate for a change to one of the platform's most-used interactions.
Names reaction diversity specifically as a success signal, capturing whether the feature adds real expressive value.

Proposing a large set of reaction options without research into what would actually be used.
Ignoring the risk of disrupting existing muscle memory during rollout.
Not defining a gradual rollout or test plan for such a high-usage feature change.

How would you decide the exact number and type of reactions to launch with?
How would you measure whether this changed the emotional tone of engagement on the platform?
What would you do if adoption of new reactions was very low after launch?