Ask clarifying questions ie, who, what, why and how? Explain the structure you're going to use so that the interviewer understands your train of thought - users (possibly even identify a persona) > use cases > needs/goals > prioritize goals > identify solutions > solution tradeoffs > summarize recommendation Example: Clarification - who is it for? All FB users, App users, or web users - what is it? birthday notification - why do they need it? all you to connect/wish happy birthday to your FB friend - how does it work? post message Users (possibly even identify a persona) - newer FB users, i.e. likes 501, friends > 500 ... or other variations - persona we can identify, unless selected by interviewer, will be an average user, mobile app user, female, single, 28, college graduate, $50K salary Use cases/Needs - this persona wants to easily find friend birthdays, wish them happy birthday and be aware of subsequent posts made to their friends timeline - this persona wants to be notified of friend's birthdays so that she can plan ahead, whether it be response or else Goals - Discover relevant birthdays (current based activity) - Upcoming birthday dashboard (future based activity) Prioritize Goals - based on the following criteria - Discovery/Customer Satisfaction/Ease of Implementation/Overall - Use A, B, C priority system - to the persona, how important are Discovery/Customer Satisfaction/Ease of Implementation/Overall for each of the goals - Discover relevant birthdays - A/A/A/A - Upcoming birthday dashboard - A/B/B/B Identify Solutions for the following goal based on the previous prioritization - "Discover relevant birthdays (current based activity)" - possible solutions ---pre-written message day of birthday, all you have to do is click post ---sticky reminder day of birthday on NewsFeed ---gift recommendation on NewsFeed Tradeoffs - based on the following criteria - Revenue Potential/Customer Satisfaction/Ease of Implementation/Overall --- Revenue here because the focus is on FB to decide what to implement - Use A, B, C priority system - to the FB, how important are Revenue Potential/Customer Satisfaction/Ease of Implementation/Overall for each of the solutions ---pre-written message day of birthday, all you have to do is click post - B/B/A/B ---sticky reminder day of birthday on NewsFeed - A/A/A/A ---gift recommendation on NewsFeed - A/B/C/B -------Sticky reminder is the best overall At this stage you can also do a pros and cons list for each of the 3 solutions to further investigate Summary - Recommendation is to create a sticky remainder at the top of newsfeed to remind folks of their friends birthdays. - benefits are that it is easy to implement, will allow mobile app users to not forget to post happy birthday message, easy way to test and see if it's a worthwhile feature, can also be the foundation of the other 2 solutions,