Product Critique

Note:

This product critique format is not for interviews. I generally spend an hour playing around with the app and go far deeper. you won’t be given more than 20 mins in an interview to do a product critique.
Julie Zhuo wrote a nice post on how to do a product critique. Check it out.
I don’t follow any structure, but I try to cover a few things which I will mention below.
I do this critique from a PM POV. So it is not just about how the interface looks or the micro-interactions. I also spend a lot of time thinking about distribution strategies, positioning, copy, metrics, and a bunch of other things.
I generally try to go out of my comfort zone and choose an app I am not familiar with to do a critique. It helps me look at it from a fresh perspective.

I ask the following questions while doing the critique:

Strategy, Distribution, and Market

Playstore

Is the name unique? Is it memorable?
What is written in the About section? Is it too generic? Do they talk about value prop in terms of JTBD?
Have they stuffed a bunch of keywords in place of a proper name?
How do the screenshots look?
What are metrics shown on the Playstore page?
Do I see it running ads on its competitor pages?
What have they done with the Description section? Have they done a bunch of keyword stuffing? Written the description using reviews of their users to show social proof?
How is the page different from its competitors?

Positioning

What do I think about its positioning?
Is there a crisp and consistent description of the product across their Playstore page as well as the app?
What is A, B, C but not D of this product? A, B, and C are things they say they do and D is something they say they don’t? This is a framework I learned from Shaan Puri.

Onboarding

Have they made the onboarding frictionless or are there too many steps?
Can you skip the onboarding process?
Is sign up mandatory?
What is asked in the onboarding process?
How quickly can I get to the meat of the product? Get gratification by completing the task I hired it for? Measure both by the number of steps as well as time taken.
What is the developer optimizing for in the signup flow?
How is copy tied to its positioning? I am looking for consistency in positioning and their copy in the product.
What are the decisions taken during onboarding that might impact FTUE?
If there is an onboarding carousel, are they talking about features or jobs?

FTUE

How does the app feel? What emotions does it raise in me?
Is the FTUW underwhelming? Does it meet my expectations?
If I have to describe this app to others how will I do that? Will I use the same things the developer highlighted n the Playstore page/app?
Is the experience a straight line?
What is supernormal about it?
If I was a PM designing this FTUE what data would I collect to personalize the experience?
What are the hypotheses I have which I would test as a PM?

JTBD

Defensibility

What is the moat?
How is the app increasing the switching cost?
How is it decreasing switching cost if I am thinking of switching over from other apps?

Building trust and reliability

Product and Design

What are the interactions I like?
What do I hate?
Do I like the information architecture?
What are the things I can copy in my own products?
Is there some interactions, some visual elements which do not map to my understanding of Design? Anything which does not follow industry standards that other apps follow?
Does the product design align with the frameworks I have learned over years? Anything I learned which I can turn into new frameworks?
Now that I have used the product, what are the metrics I think the PM is measuring?
What do I think the north star of this product is?
What are the experiments I would run?
Does the app experience tie back to what was promised in the Playstore?