Great question. Let me start by sharing my understanding of Google Docs. It is a words processor that’s part of Google Workspaces, the service gives users the tools to write, share and edit documents. Am I missing something? Interviewer: now, that sounds right to me. Alright, so to start let me share the outline I’ll follow to solve this case. I’ll start by thinking of Google Docs users, this will help me ask clarifying questions and state some assumptions. After this, I can define a business goal and top level metrics to define how a successful improvement looks like. Then, I will focus on a user segment or a user journey that has the biggest potential to help us reach our goal. Then I will brainstorm pain points we can solve for this user segment. Next, I’ll list solutions and I will talk about their trade-offs, and lastly I will close with my recommendation. Interviewer: alright, sounds good. Ok, let me define Google Docs users:

• Consumers: writers, readers, reviewers, editors, kids, adults, elderly, students, teachers, freelancers
• Businesses: small companies, medium companies, large companies

Strategically, Google is interested in winning market share in the enterprise market, this is why we made Docs (and Drive) part of our Cloud offering. This goal is particularly more important now that we had a surge in remote work and learning. This being said, I’d like to set a business goal to measure market penetration in enterprise offerings, which means focusing in our business customers. An important thing to keep in mind here is other players in the space like Microsoft and Dropbox. Microsoft has an important presence will large enterprises, who are familiar with the Office suite, including even schools, and Dropbox has gained popularity with smaller companies since it has been offering file sharing services for a while now. I think and interesting opportunity for Google here is around small businesses, specially due to our penetration in this area with other services like Google My Business, so let’s narrow down in this segment.

With this biz Goal, some of the top level metrics we can measure here are:

• # of paying customers
• Market share (%)

We can come back to discuss more detailed metrics once we have discuss a solution.

interviewers: alright.

Perfect, let me now brainstorm some of the goals and needs of enterprise customers. When I think about SMBs who could need Docs, customers like Small law firms, accountants, financial advisors, real-state offices, etc. are the ones I can think of. Here are the pain points and needs I see: For SMBs:

• They want to share documents with their teams or clients for collaboration/review
• They need to get approvals to do something on behalf of a customer (signatures or “Looks good to me” confirmations) to complete a process
• They need to keep copies of approved/processed documents for referral purposes
• They need to keep documents safe (from cyber attacks) to protect confidential information
• They need to ensure documents won’t get lost to avoid re-work or economic loses
• They need to send documents to official offices physically or via e-platforms

For clients of these SMBs:

• Prove their identity when providing information
• Often they need to access systems they are not familiar with and are hard to use
• They don’t trust or find it hard to trust these services
• It’s quiet painful to scan/gather information to fill similar forms over and over

I believe one of the most painful use cases where we could improve Docs for the SMBs and their customers is sharing information to complete a process with a third party entity such as home-buying applications, immigration processes, etc. I also don’t think Microsoft or Dropbox are providing solutions for these use cases at the moment, so it’s a good way to differentiate and gain market share. Let me now brainstorm solutions.

Solutions:

• Integrate Google Accounts with Docs to create an electronic ID to certify identity
• Integrate Docs with systems used for procedures like immigration, loans, etc.
• Build a solution to help users keep all their procedural information together to re-use in multiple procedures (similar to the old fashioned thing of keeping files with important docs)

I’d prioritize the solution of creating a cyber ID using Google Accounts to allow Docs to process official documents. This product would align with Google’s mission of organizing the worlds information and making it useful and available for everyone, and will differentiate Docs from other offerings. Of course, one of the risks would be to strike a balance with data privacy and security, but I trust we can solve this leveraging our strengths in these areas.

To recap, my recommendation would be to develop an electronic ID leveraging Google Accounts that would enable users certify identity to collaborate and process official documents using Google Docs. This feature would be available in Google Workspaces for customers who acquire a Business Plan. This would help us increase the number of customers in the SMB market, allowing us to increase our market share in the space.

Step 1- What is the goal to improve Google Docs?

It could be increase in usage or revenue. Now Google Docs is available in Google’s free tier (for individuals) and G-suite both. But there is no difference in Google Docs between the two versions. Google Docs doesn’t have its own revenue but is part of G-suite subscription product.

So if revenue is the goal then we need to see what features in Google Docs can help improve G-Suites subscription price. For this goal, KPI to measure is Increase in Annual Revenue due to Google Docs

If increase in usage is the goal then it can be increased by either increasing usage from existing users or getting new users. Usage is defined by KPIs such as Number of Google Docs created per month, Percentage of Docs shared, Number of users collaborating monthly

Let’s assume increase in usage from existing users is the goal

Step 2- Define what Google Docs does, user journey & user persona

Google Docs helps users create documents to store data on cloud and share it with others. True power of Google Docs is real-time collaboration between multiple users on a piece of information.

User Journey: A user creates a Google Doc –> Users puts data in the Doc –> User invites others to view that data and/or put more data

User Persona: College _s_tudents collaborating on a project/assignment, Working professionals collaborating on a project

Let’s take working professional in IT sector are the target users. IT sector because these users are tech savvy & represents a large set of users for Google Docs

Step 3- Define use cases, pain points for target user persona

IT professionals such as developers, project managers, business analyst and quality managers need to use Google Docs for gathering customer requirements, list down things/resources to store, prepare project plan, present project summary/output etc.

One of the important requirements is to be able to insert ‘charts’, ‘process flow diagrams’, ‘shapes’ so that a particular topic can be better explained. But currently Google Docs is limited in that aspect. It just allows ‘tables’ to be inserted. (There may be plugins available but their experience will not be as seamless as having these features in the Docs itself)

Because these capabilities are not available in Google docs, users need to use other softwares such as MS Word etc to create such documents which limits usage of Google Docs.

Step 4- Solution and Success Criteria

Having option to create charts, process flow diagrams, shapes in Docs directly will increase in usage from IT professionals because they need to create such documents always.

To start, we need to figure out what are most commonly used diagrams, charts & shapes and introduce them in Docs.

KPI to measure success- Percentage of Docs where these things are used, Change in number of Google Docs created by target users monthly

Gotcha, so I understand that our goal is to improve Google Docs and identify key metrics.

Questions

• Is the purpose of these metrics to quantify the performance specifically of the features we suggest? Or Docs as a broader product and its impact on the Google ecosystem? Let’s assume the former.
• Is there any goal we are trying to improve for Google Docs? Let’s assume we want to increase usage, and have Docs also drive productivity suite subscriptions.
• Are there any specific users we’re aiming to target? No further input, the answer to the previous question informs this one.

Structure & Answer

Okay, so we’re looking to improve Google Docs usage, and drive post sale monetization through productivity suite subscriptions. We want to also suggest key metrics to measure success. Great — I’ll first go through which users we’re targeting, their current experience with Docs, and certain pain points and areas of improvement. Next, I’ll go through some feature ideas and vision. Finally, I’ll go through key metrics, and possible challenges/problems with my proposal.

Since our goal is to drive usage and also post sale monetization, let’s brainstorm on working adults, and also college students. Working adults because these are immediate customers, and college students because these are the next customers. Some issues working adults have with Google Docs include difficulty shifting from Microsoft Word to Docs. All through school, students use Microsoft Word to compose assignments, print assignments, and turn them in for a mark. When they enter the working world, they often switch to Google Docs (if their company subscribes to G Suite), and this can be jarring. Given this consideration, I’d like to shift focus to college/university students in an effort to invest in acquiring customers of the future.

So why are students using Microsoft Word instead of Docs?

• Default installation on Windows devices
• Integration with citation software (article/book database –> MLA or APA citation)
• Simplicity for offline use & historical precedence

What else do students wish word processors could provide?

• Integration with plagiarism detection in order to make sure papers don’t get flagged for cheating
• Quick-access thesaurus to improve the diction in essays
• Higher quality grammar suggestions to improve the quality of essays
• Dictation

Of these user challenges, the most interesting one to me is integration with citation software, primarily because this impacts all college students who take a class requiring essay writing, and Google is in a unique space to capitalize on this, given the ownership of Google Scholar. My hypothesis is that by driving user delight in college, we can convert long-time Word users into Google Docs users right before they enter the workforce. While in the workforce, they will have input into what productivity suite they want to use, and this will in turn drive more subscriptions of G Suite.

I envision the product to be an add-in to Google Docs, which can be accessed by right-clicking the mouse. The user would be able to write a quote, and then access the Citation add-in, which contains a database of all published scientific journals, books, and articles which are searchable. The user finds the correct source, and then selects it, selects a citation format, and clicks “Okay” — voila, the user gets the citation in the right format in the paper, and in the Bibliography section. The Citation add-in can include some predictive modeling based on previous selections to predict which types of publications/articles/books the user is likely to select to improve search functionality (Google’s bread and butter). This is the productivity tool of the future college student, and I’m envious of the student who gets to use this (after completing countless essays and a Master’s thesis in the sciences).

Key metrics for Usage

Main metrics to track the impact of the Citations Add-in on Google Docs usage includes a split of sessions/user of Citation users vs Non-Citation users, normalized for user demographic. You could also run an A/B test, splitting users who have this feature auto-installed, and users without the feature available. Along with sessions/user, I would track weekly active users (since essays are often due each week). Along with usage metrics for Google Docs, I would track lower level app usage metrics (citations entered, quick-delete citations, average search result position of the correct search result, etc. this can get very granular).

Metrics for monetization

This one is difficult, since our hypothesis is that these students will graduate and become professionals who subscribe to the product. You could run a long-term cohort study on randomly sampled college students pre- and post- launch of the product and follow them over a couple years. This is a hard-sell as an experiment, and we would likely need to rely on common sense that building product love in students will lead to more users in the future.

The market is sizeable here (all university students), the need is there (citations are a pain), and the execution is solid given Google’s IP and talent. The main problem with this proposal is that it is difficult to tie success into monetization, which was one goal of the initiative. That being said, usage success is clearly measurable, and I believe that if we convert students, we are recruiting professional users of the future.