Product Manager Interviews (Figma — A Product Use Case — Part 2)

7 min readApr 18, 2022

What is the one new feature you would recommend adding to this tool?

I will start by defining the problem, I believe this below feature will solve. The problem is that as a product designer you don’t have a quantitative way of telling you how good is your design, how much progress you have made through the running iteration, and how much time you will need to improve on it.

Being a user of Figma and an avid fan, I would recommend the following new features:

Feature 1: The ability to measure a good UX design (usability, equitability, and enjoyability) by an automatically calculated score for each of the 3 aspects of live in-app design (It is like a GRAMMARLY for UX design)

If you were the PM for the feature described, how would you go about (a) proving its value and (b) then coordinating its design and development?

For (a) the value proposition for the suggested feature:

Feature: I believe that this is going to give interaction designers and PMs a better quantitative way to measure the quality of their designs per each user flow by a score for app quality in aspects (usability, equitability, and enjoyability). It is going to be telemetry analytics that is constantly calculated for every new design version so a designer can track their progress and optimize for always evolving design

For (b) coordinating its design and development/ release action plan:

First, let’s start with outlining some assumptions:

I will assume that this feature is absolutely important to work on right now and we agreed with the business to prioritize it.
I already collected the needed approvals from the surrounding team (other pm and maybe legal or security on the HLD of the feature)

Second, for the action plan itself: since the problem is quite clear I will call for a design sprint (that continues for 5 working days)

Stage 1: the problem space

Understand: Setting the space, by getting people on board booking the team for an entire week Product manager meets with the Product marketing manager, product design, and engineering. Make sure to contact customers for user interviews in the validation phase.
Building incentives for the team, start by sharing the vision and incentives behind this feature and outlining the problem we are trying to solve. Then share the information/ data proving its value while outlining any assumptions when it comes to data to drop any chances of misinformation and over-expectations
Define: you have the problem well defined by the whole team where everyone shared their take on the problem and asks all the why’s questions.
Do your HMWs (how might we?) stickies and define our user stories

Stage 2: the solution space

Diverge/ sketch: all the team starts brainstorming and sketching their ideas about the solution using a method like the crazy 8s using any whiteboard tools, then create solutions storyboard.
Decide: use dot voting on storyboards or sketches to agree on your Frankenstein hybrid solution storyboard and make sure that everyone is on board
How would you define success for this feature (what is the expected delivery?) What are our success metrics? Signals that we will be measuring and our metrics to keep track of success

Stage 3: the development space

Prototype: in this phase, you start the prototyping phase your designers are working to develop mockups while devs start building the base functionality of the feature generating auto scores that updates with design changes
Validate: connect with a group of Figms active designers and schedule recorded user interviews going about using the feature and evaluating its effectiveness to them. Collect those designers’ valuable feedback and share it with the team in your retrospectives.
The feedback coming from the first design sprint iteration is very critical as it tells if you are working on the right track and whether you are likely to achieve the conversion you need and prove your product-market-fit.
Finally, you will iterate based on this collected feedback and do all the tweaks you need. Until it comes to the actual release for your pilot/pro users. Write up our user stories and outline the development iterations till we reach the release date

What will be your go-to-market strategy for this feature?

Our go-to-market strategy will include a lot of teams including marketing, sales, customer support, engineering, and QA

Stage 1: Pre-release Plan

Consult the legal team, for the launch in the specified markets US and Europe
Coordinate with engineering, for the on-call engineer designation and who will be available during the launch, and at what capacity
Work with testing, I will take testing confirmation to assure no-critical bugs are opened before the initial release
Discuss your date and plan with the management/ leadership to assure no collision in company goals at the time
Prepare release notes
Confirm marketing strategy: from early on you will need your marketing team to get on board so they can help with defining the marketing tactics, that perfectly match your new feature. In your marketing guide, you will need to share information on the following:

Background

Background information about the industry or the problem, as a PM I will document my view on the digital design industry and share Figma’s vision on how to enrich the design process for designers and non-designers.
Problem Statement: I will share the problem statement that your feature is solving “Designers and non-designers are not able to accurately assess the quality of their design to both know how much progress they achieved and quantize the quality measure to update their direct team”
Product Goals: I will outline here how my product solves the outlined problem, the details of the feature we are building

Product background and positioning

Feature value proposition: the value/ edge your product will have after adding this new feature.
Feature positioning is how you want your product to be perceived among other products
I would share Mockups and prototypes to give the marketing team a taste of how the new feature will be looking
Product messaging: share the pain points your feature is solving for your customers

Market background

The target audience: professional designers and non-designers in software teams within small, mid-size, and corporates
The target market: for the first release we are targeting users in the US and Europe only
Competitors: InVision, Adobe Suite (Illustrator, XD, Photoshop), and sketch

Acquisition channels

This feature is more appealing to professional designers of different tech company sizes. Figma will charge their sales army of account managers and account executives connecting with their top customers and key accounts. Also, the marketing team will start preparing the launch video,

7 . Prepare sales and support materials, define what you see necessary to sell your product and what kind of technical writing and support materials the technical writing team will need to write to support your customers after the launch, that will include the following:

Pricing strategy: the new feature will be part of both the professional and organization paying plans
The marketing team will prepare the video tutorial series for the how-to of the feature after sharing the marketing guide with them
Share a user guide with both the customer support team and the technical writing team, that has a little bit of problem background with Feature Name (Auto scoring for UI design quality) and different use cases, it will include:

The main functionality of the feature.
A description of how users can get to your feature (user journey)
A description of any known issues with the product (or upcoming features)
I will include needed (screenshots or mocks) for visual elements to make the guide more user intuitive

8. Prepare the feature launch email (it will include the new feature outline, benefit, analytics, and how the feature is doing in general). I will follow by including learning materials and tutorial videos on our official YouTube channel. I will close by sharing any future plans and timelines.

Stage 2: Post-release Plan

Feedback channels/ forums: I will continue monitoring our forums for any rising problems
Data monitoring: I will monitor the impact of the feature release on our north star (Active users from designers and no-designers) besides, keeping an eye on my success metrics defined below.
Get the media coverage we need from major tech magazines like WIRED, MIT technology review, FORBES, and Techcrunch.
Monitor customer support cases to collect any learnings or bugs raised, share them with the team, and plan for your response after doing your prioritization. Plan a regular meeting through the hypercar period after the launch
Monitor social media feedback especially Twitter and Reddit subreddits.

What metrics for success would you define for the proposed feature and why?

I will use the HEART method as it addresses a new feature release in all aspects that matter for me Happenies, engagement, adoption, retention, and task success.