#PretendProduct November 2022: Part 1
Pretend Product is a series of musings on a product that should exist in the world or improvements I’d offer to an already existing product
Since I have 40 ideas for November, I’ll split them up into 5 per post. This is part 1. Thank you!
Proposed solution:
User problem:
Current solution to the user problem:
Measuring success:
Proposed solution: On Apple iOS keyboard, put a period, question mark, exclamation point, and comma where space bar is and make space bar smaller.
User problem: I want to communicate efficiently.
Current solution to the user problem: I have to toggle to punctuation which makes typing slower and more inefficient.
Measuring success: Reduced average time to compose message on a per user basis (since each individual takes varying amounts of average time so comparing across all users might not represent the increased efficiency).
Reduced toggling to punctuation keyboard if we indeed made the most needed punctuation marks more accessible.
Proposed solution: Reviews for companies’ recruiting practices
User problem: I want to be recruited by companies that have fair and respectful recruiting practices.
Current solution to the user problem: Companies ghost, drag out interview timelines, auto reject candidates etc and many of us silently experience it.
Blind has some information on their site which is hard to find; all posts are lumped together. Even if you search for ‘interview’ you’ll find both people asking for referrals and people commenting on other’s questions about the interview process.
With both Blind and Glassdoor you must create an account to leave a review yourself in order to access posts.
The proposed site would be open access forcing companies to think critically about their reputation in candidate treatment and would make information more discoverable by having each review as its own post on the recruiting experience rather than reading through both employee posts and comments on candidate questions in order to aggregate a story on what to expect.
Measuring success: Monthly active user retention would indicate how valuable the information on the site is and if people trust it enough to come back to it for other companies. Since it takes on average months to find a new role, we’d expect retention in the magnitude of months but not as much for daily use since we’d expect people to be looking up companies they’re interested as they find new roles to apply to.
Proposed solution: Airport gate food delivery UberEats^Air
User problem: I want food and drinks while I’m waiting for my flight without having to travel to the restaurant and risk losing my seat at the gate or missing important flight announcements.
Current solution to the user problem: People wait in lines for food and drinks at the respective restaurants or if travelling in groups will send one person to order a meal while the other watches the seats & baggage/listens for announcements.
Measuring success: Increased number of orders for restaurants at the airport. If being at the gate was inhibiting people then unlocking this ability to order from the gate would increase the number of orders at the airport.
Increased airport rating for airports that currently survey for customers satisfaction.
This can also be used to order ahead and have your food waiting for you at the gate when you get through security!
Proposed solution: Indicate who sent the last message in iMessage and have a filter for “my turn” so I can see where I haven’t responded yet.
User problem: I want to communicate efficiently to messages I intend to respond to.
Current solution to the user problem: Scroll through your messages and see if there are any you haven’t responded to yet by clicking into the conversation or reading the preview to see if it’s something you haven’t responded to yet. This often results in people forgetting to respond to messages that they had planned to.
Measuring success: Reduced conversation gaps measured by time between messages. If people are remembering to respond then you’ll see that in time between messages exchanged instead of someone coming back months later and apologizing because they had intended to respond or worse, not responding at all out of guilt.
Proposed solution: Buzzers for servers
User problem: I want to get my servers attention respectfully and in a timely fashion.
Current solution to the user problem: There is currently no clear way to get a servers attention appropriately so people either wait until the person comes back around and doesn’t look too busy or they just interrupt whoever they can see.
Measuring success: I hypothesize would decrease negative restaurant ratings due to slow or inattentive service.
Thoughts?
I’d love feedback on the idea either here or on LinkedIn.
