Metrics question

You are the PM of Messenger, you noticed that its DAU has gone down significantly. How would you go about looking for the root cause?

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

Structured root-cause investigation of a DAU decline in a messaging product.

Confirm the DAU drop is real by ruling out a tracking or instrumentation change before investigating user behavior.
Segment by platform, region, and user tenure to see if the drop concentrates in a specific group, like a recent iOS release or one country.
Check for a recent product change: a new UI, a feature removal, or a bug affecting message delivery or notifications.
Check external factors: a competitor's feature launch, a platform policy change (like Apple's notification permission prompts), or a regional outage.
Look at the funnel within the app: are fewer users opening it, or are they opening it but sending fewer messages.
Once isolated, propose next steps, such as a rollback, a targeted fix, or a re-engagement campaign for the affected segment.

Separates 'fewer people opening the app' from 'people opening it but disengaging faster,' since each needs a different fix.
Names a concrete, plausible cause, like a recent notification permission change reducing push delivery, as a first hypothesis.
Gives an illustrative finding, e.g. the drop concentrated in one region after a local competitor's feature launch, marked as an assumption.
Proposes a phased response: quick mitigation first, then a durable fix once root cause is confirmed.

Jumping to a product fix before ruling out measurement issues.
Investigating only internal product changes and ignoring competitive or platform-level external factors.

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