My favorite app - Robinhood

Describe your favorite product and how would you improve it.

I want to review my favorite stock trading app – Robinhood. 

To develop enhancements to Robinhood, I want to take the following approach:

1.     Review the application, the company, and the competition

2.     Describe company users and needs

3.     Define how the app is solving these needs, and what are the potential /improvements

It is a mobile app & website that allows people to invest in stocks, ETFs, options, as well as perform crypto trading. It operates completely online and without any fees. The app is very easy to use and puts the ability to perform simple trades up and center in the user experience. Moreover, it has revolutionized the trading by introducing the concept of free stock trades. 

 Robinhood gains revenue from the interest on customers’ cash balances, margin lending, as well as selling order information to high-frequency traders. Also, a growing source of revenue is Robinhood Gold service, that provides Morningstar research information for stocks. 

 Robinhood’s biggest competitors are larger banks and brokerage companies, that offer more complete financial services. Traditionally, brokerage companies were charging fees per each trade, and had required account minimums. It has been changing recently, but still the largest players have additional advantages to bigger accounts. Also, most brokerage companies have user interfaces that feel like mid-augts. 

To discuss Robinhood users: the target audience are people with limited funds that are willing to participate in the stock market and grow their investment portfolio (desired outcome). To confirm, based on the information available online https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/17/robinhood-drives-retail-trading-renaissance-during-markets-wild-ride.html) , Robinhood has over 10 million customers, and most of them are millennials and new entrants to the stock market, with the average account size of $2k.  

Desired outcome for Robinhood users: trade stocks and other investment types and grow their portfolios with the certain goal. Robinhood’s interface is great for trading and placing orders, and it provides an industry-respected advice for investments (Morningstar Gold). Robinhood picks (email newsletter) provides updates on the top movers on the market, and makes it easy to select the next best trade. However, it does not provide the overall portfolio overview, and does not let users do a long-term planning for their investment goals.

To analyze the potential improvements, we should look at the data and our current goals. 

·      If the goal for the company is in increasing growth in the target market, we could continue building out features that are addressing the target market. Robinhood is addressing it with cash management account and could potentially add a credit/loan management account for this segment. Additional enhancement could be investment and rebalancing advice that will help with users in the upper range of the target segment.

·      If there is a significant churn rate, we need to look at the reasons of this churn, and how to address it. Also, we could review the user segments that experience this churn for additional analysis.

·      If the goal is to attract additional market segments, we could consider adding additional capabilities targeted for these segments, e.g. portfolio management features, automatic investment advice, or collaborate with other companies to offer related services (e.g. with RocketMortgage to offer mortgage solutions). 

Ideas for Improving Google Map---Travel

“What potential improvements would you do to Google Maps to improve the engagement?”

Google Maps is a de-facto navigational tool that is used across the world for finding the way, and exploring neighborhoods and places. 

I am going to list the problems that are encountered by travelers using Google Maps.

I love traveling, and I feel that there are many examples of when existing travel experiences are sub-par. Many people are using many different applications to plan their travels, and they have to go through the complicated and confusing interfaces. This is why some people go for cruises and tours - as you don’t really need to have efforts in planning. I hope that my ideas and suggestions could provide the better experience in travel planning.

I would like to increate the value proposition of using Google Maps for planning trips and travel for the users, thus driving the engagement of users with travel planning features. Also, I would discuss potential integrations with other Google services, as well as data sources that would be beneficial to the suggested problems.

Usually, travelers have at least a certain level of disposable income, and they go through the relatively similar steps and problems in planning the trips. However, each person would have different preferences in desired experiences, as well as potential spending.

Potential target addressable market for this solution would include both domestic and international travelers.

Use Cases

The typical user journey for planning a travel looks like this:

Research possible experiences at the place -> Select desired experiences -> Research & book flights + hotels -> Pack -> Travel

Here are some possible problems at each step:

Research experiences:

• Find some things to do that are interesting for me

• Find some things that are relevant to places I am going to visit

• Compare different experiences

• Review the locations that are involved

• Review transportation modes

• Compare the availability dates

• Compare prices

• Create a plan of places to visit and things to do

Select desired experiences:

• Book events, tickets

• Plan road trips

• Ensure no overlap

Research& book flights + hotels

• Select best flights & hotels from the following perspectives:

• Price

• Loyalty rewards

• Convenience

• Luxury desires

• Ensure that flights & hotels allow us to experience everything we want from this trip

• Book flights & hotels

• Apply loyalty rewards & points

Pack

• Create a packing list 

• Ensure that I have everything for my selected experiences & locations

• Pack clothes for the weather

• Pack luggage

Travel

• Follow the created plan - always have it on hand

• Research some places on the way

• Navigate the traveled area

• Make adjustments to the plan if necessary

Potential Solutions

From experience research side, I would suggest the following possible solutions:

1. Use Explore Nearby section when exploring other cities to display data from Google Trips

   • Filter data based on my profile (income level, age, interests)

   • Potentially, display the information on the map

   • Display prices and dates from the trip

2. Display upcoming trips (as detected in Gmail) in Google Maps - already doing that for hotels.

3. Display suggested events (e.g. hikes, trails, museums, concerts) based on the relevancy.

4. Provide additional details on each of the experiences

5. Display events from the location when exploring - use web search results. 

6. Display select trips from experience providers

   • Possibly: create 2-sided marketplace for experiences with experience providers

   • Parse information from advertisement boards

When selecting experiences, the following solutions would be helpful:

1. Integration with ticketing tools to create Google-managed store

2. Link to 3-party websites for orders. 

3. Integrate with email to track events booked outside of our solution

4. Calendar integration to avoid overlap. Display a link to Google Calendar when booking experiences.

Booking flights & hotels could be solved in the following ways:

1. Integration with Google Flights to allow users to search and book the flights. Could be done via App links to open details in an App, if available, or in a browser.

   • Could be displayed as 1 line with the price and link on the updated Explore tab.

2. Display hotel prices and reviews on the map - we could get data from hotels themselves, as well as from Expedia/other existing sources. Already doing that.

   • Filter by user’s past visits and profile to display relevant hotels

   • Display bookings as captured in Gmail (already doing that)

3. Allow users to filter by loyalty rewards. - potentially, in Google Maps settings allow selecting preferred rewards to display first. 

Creating a packing list - could be displayed as a separate application, with the link from our updated Google Maps

1. Recommend users to bring items based on:

   • Location

   • Weather

   • Selected events

   • User profile

2. Populate based on past user’s trips. If a user has visited the same location - display

3. Display advertisements and links to stores. Potential integration with Google Search advertisements, as well as Google Shopping search. 

Travel suggestions

1. Track the trip based on time, location - automatically mark certain events as completed, allow users to navigate the 

2. Display the necessary information at hand, in offline mode. We could potentially utilize Google Maps offline, and automatically load offline maps for the areas of travel.

3. Allow users to switch between trip and navigation/search modes - UI should be unobtrusive.

4. Update the trip based on the changes by parsing emails for booking/reservation changes.

Solutions Prioritization

I would prioritize solutions based on the suitability to user goals, as well as the potential benefits from integrating with other tools. User’s goal is to find and plan trips as unobtrusively and conveniently as possible. And the solutions that are aligned with this goal are:

Experience research
— Explore feature update for cases when navigating other cities and countries
This feature would utilize the data that Google has in Explore + information from Google Trips.
Google would need to display information that is relevant to the user based on the profile, and allow users to see all the suggested trips on the map as layers. 

Selecting experience
—Links to 3-party websites, and track booked trips via email receipts.

Booking flights
—In the updated “Explore” section display a 1 line for Google Flights from users’ current location to the destination

6 Books for Product Managers

I have gathered this list from multiple sources, and I have read all of these books. So this is my personal opinion.

1. Inspired: How to create (tech) products that customers love

by Marty Cagan

THE product management book to read. A new edition is more focused on tech companies and tech products, but it could be useful for any product manager. Provides a high-level overview of industry practices, skills, and the necessary changes in company culture. 
Could be a bit biased at times, but it does offer a great deal of information.

2. User Story Mapping

by Jeff Patton

Presents a simple tool (user story map) that could be used to understand the desired product, and to ensure that the team is pursuing the right goals. While the concept is simple, the book goes into details of its implementation and provides best practices. A big part of the book contains specific cases, and I feel that they could be more relevant, or more precise. But it is an excellent book to read if you want to know how to write better user stories, and how to select and prioritize which features and user stories to develop.

3. The Product Manager’s Survival Guide

by Steven Haines

Helps to understand whether you would make a good product manager. Also provides development guidelines and tips on how to do your job better. The book assumes that the management often doesn't know what the product management is, and why are we trying to do it (as it is usually the case).

4. Measure What Matters

by John Doerr

Provides an overview of Objectives and Key Results. A powerful concept that allows companies to set strategic goals, and to ensure that all employees understand how they are contributing to the company. The idea was created and defined by Andy Grove at Intel (and he has described it in his book, "High Output Management"). John Doerr has further enhanced and elaborated that idea and provided some examples from different industries. Some people may find these examples too general, or not relevant enough, but I liked them.

5. The Phoenix Project

by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford.

Easy reading on how DevOps culture and rapid experimentation could result in better products. A half-fictional book, but some details are very relevant for Product Management jobs. Takes a simple idea of a failing huge initiative, and how business focus could help technology teams to perform better. It stroke a chord for me, as I have been through a few IT transformations.

6. Power: Why Some People Have It—and Others Don't

by Jeffrey Pfeffer

This book is a collection of ideas and principles on how to influence people. In most of the cases, product managers have no direct authority and have to explain to their teammates why their role is essential. This book could provide a guide and general ideas on how to gain that influence, and how to rise in the organizational culture. Even though some of the listed methods are somewhat dubious, or too political, this could be a good read.