How would you go about evaluating technology options for a new product or feature?

What the interviewer is looking for:

The interviewer wants to understand your process for making technology decisions, including factors you consider and how you evaluate tradeoffs. They want to hear about gathering requirements, comparing options, prototyping, and making data-driven technology choices.

Example response:

"Whenever I need to evaluate technology options, I start by clearly identifying the business and user requirements. This helps me determine the technical capabilities needed and narrow down the right solutions to consider.

For example, when our team needed to build video streaming into our app, I met with product and design leads to understand performance, mobile experience, and backend integration requirements.

With requirements defined, I researched relevant technology options like WebRTC, HLS, and proprietary SDKs. I compared their technical tradeoffs in areas like real-time performance, browser support, scalability needs, and ease of implementation.

I prototyped the top 2-3 options in parallel, had my team test each, and gathered feedback. This data helped me determine that WebRTC was the best fit. Through requirements gathering, research, and prototyping, I aim to set my team up for success by picking the right technologies."