Daniel Parrott: Product Management Quiz

Questions 2 & 4

2. You’re designing a mobile application for pet owners. This app will remind you to feed your dog and also remind you to purchase pet food. This app will be free but will carry ads by pet food manufacturers and retailers.

(I switched the order of the questions around, as I feel the feature list for the MVP should come before any UI is developed.)

a) Since resources are limited, create a list of features that must be in the 1.0 product ("minimum viable product"), and another list of things that can wait for a 2.0.

MVP Features

These features need to be the bare minimum to solving the specific problem being tackled (feeding a dog reminder)

- Set 2 reminder times for feeding (focus purely on adult dogs at first, using bags of dry food)o Which time 1st feeding, what time 2nd feeding?o Standard alarm sound (no options)

- Reminder for pet food purchasing (only keep track of one bag of food at a time)o Set first day for new bag of foodo Input size of bago Use average dog bowl size (no customization)o Dog food level indicator

- Ad at bottom of screen at all times

Learning Goal: Download rates, Ads Clicked rates

2.0 Features (Expand to multiple pets, and pets other than dogs, increased settings)

- Pet profileso Name/ breed of dog/ type of pet/ picture of peto How many times specific pet is fed per day and what dayso Custom alarms options

Sound of alarmo Size of bowl used for each feedingo Specific pet food brand used for each profile

Pick from drop down list of food in Pet pantry- Pet pantry

o Input however many bags/cans of food in your whole houseo Input specific brand of food for each bag

Drop down list/ barcode scannero Keeps track of the total level of pet food in your house, alerting you when you have a certain

number of bags/cans left.- Increased Ad targeting

Beyond 2.0 Features

- Recommended dog nutrition based on breed of dog (pets in general)- Coupons for pet food- Pet journal (what foods they like, nutritional notes, vet notes)- Pet medication reminders- Nearest location of pet food stores that carry your favorite brands

b) Prepare a quick mock-up of the user interface for this product.

4. You work for Yahoo! as a product manager for the search engine business and are asked to prepare some information for a new incoming Yahoo! executive.

a) Prepare a very brief competitive analysis of Yahoo!'s search engine.

Yahoo!’s Search Engine Competitive Analysis Brief

Google Microsoft (Bing) Yahoo! ASK Network AOLFeb 2014

Search 67.5% 18.4% 10.3% 2.4% 1.3%

RankingsPoint

Change from Dec

2013

+ 0.2 + 0.2 - 0.5 - 0.1 0.0

Interbrand 2013 Brand

Ranking#2 #5 < #100 < #100 < #100

Company’s Other

Products & Services

Internet Browser, Maps,

Email, Productivity

Apps, Multimedia,

Mobile OS, PC OS

Internet Browser, Maps,

Email, Productivity

Apps, Multimedia,

Mobile OS, PC OS

Email, Multimedia Apps

Ask.com, Dictionary.com,

About.com

AOL.com, Huffington Post,

TechCrunch, MapQuest

2013 Advertising

Revenue (Millions)

$50,578 $3,201 $1,741 $1,604 $1,613

Search Page Screen Shots

Very

clean and simple search

page.

Extremely search focused

Very graphical and still simple

search page.

Very search focused

Cluttered search page, small search bar

appears at top of page

Not search focused

Simple search page, search bar

prominent

Search focused

Cluttered search page, small search bar

Not search focused

Key NotesSearch engine powered by

Microsoft Bing

Sources

comScore Ratings: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/comscore-releases-january-2014-u-210500309.html

Brand Ratings: Interbrand http://www.interbrand.com/en/best-global-brands/2013/Best-Global-Brands-2013-Brand-View.aspx

Financial data was obtained from individual company 10k’s for 2013.

b) Provide your opinion with regard to the most important reasons responsible for Yahoo's position relative to its competitors. How would you go about confirming your opinion?

In my opinion Yahoo! is in 3rd relative to its competitors for two main reasons.

1. Top Search Engines are Search Focused – Provide more Useful Results As shown with the screenshots included in the Competitive Analysis, the Google and Bing search pages highlight the search bar sending the message that their main focus is search. Along with this idea, the top search engines provide easy to use and adaptable search queries. For example, a simple search for “Austin,tx weather” shows a nice graphical representation of the weather forecasts in Google, Bing, and Yahoo!. A search for “78705 weather” brings up no graphical weather forecasts in Yahoo! search and instead lists links for weather.

2. Competitors Develop Widely Used Hardware/ Software Platforms Google and Microsoft products are so widespread that they naturally have a higher search engine usage than competitors. This works in their favor in two ways. First, all of their platforms use their search engine as the default setting, meaning some users won’t ever bother to change it. Secondly, by being technology industry leaders Google and Microsoft are considered experts in all things software. Users to tend to flock toward industry experts in any given field.

These opinions could be verified most easily by surveying existing Yahoo! users, prompting them for reasons why they either use/don’t use Yahoo! search and also their opinions on Yahoo!’s product offering in general.

Further web research into correlations between Hardware (PC and Mobile) usage and their corresponding Search Engines could prove useful. Along with this, research could be done on the correlations between a company’s Software products and their Search Engines.