A product manager’s core
responsibilities include working with a team to design, build, ship, and
continuously improve a product. During product manager interviews, most
companies love to hone in on your ability to execute against these responsibilities
by asking how you might think about designing a product.
The popular product
design question usually takes shape in the form of something like:
“Walk
me through how you would design X product for Y user”
Some common example
questions we’ve frequently heard include:
- How would you design a grocery store for elderly people
- Design an alarm clock for blinds
- Design a bookcase for children
When you answer these
types of product design questions as part of the product manager interview, you
should always approach them with a framework in mind. Below is one that we
highly recommend:
1) Ask Clarifying
Questions
Remember, there is no
point continuing with an answer if you haven’t fully grasped the situation.
I can’t count the number
of times I’ve asked a simple product design question to a candidate who then
proceeded to give me a lengthy five minute answer before I realized that the
candidate had never used the product before.
If I asked a candidate to
walk me through how he/she might design a alarm clock for blind, I expect the candidate
to first ask clarifying questions such as "should I design a physical clock, is the user totally blind or color blind
Remember, product
managers don’t just dive headfirst into launching a product without first understanding
the whole situation and the business goals.
A candidate who doesn’t
ask clarifying questions is a big red flag and tells me that he/she would
design products without understanding what a user truly needs.
2) Communicate Your
Answer Outline
There is nothing worse
for an interviewer than trying to follow a candidate’s unstructured train of
thought when responding to a product question.
It’s crucial to
demonstrate that you have taken time to comprehend the situation and
then lay out some groundwork on how you plan to answer this question.
Showing that you are
organized by structuring out your answers to these questions will put your
interviewer at ease and keep your thoughts in line so that you don’t ramble or
go off on tangents.
An example of how you
might approach this is to say “Now that I’ve understood the scope of this
product, I’d like to lay out how I might approach this design question.
First, I’m going to
re-iterate what my business goals are.
Second, I’ll identify my
customer base and their use cases.
Third, I’m going to
brainstorm some features and evaluate these features against the business goals
I’ve listed.
Lastly, I’ll discuss
trade-offs and summarize my recommendation.”
3) Identify the Users /
Customers and their Use Cases
Although you might have
lightly touched upon this while asking some clarifying questions, this step is
crucial to locking down exactly who the product’s customers and users
are and their use cases.
Remember that for certain
products, the customer and the user of the product may be different people. For
example, in the educational app/games market, parents are often the customers
who buy these apps / games for their children to use.
I would recommend drawing
a 2-column table on a whiteboard or piece of paper with: your
users/customers on the left column, and their respective use cases on the right
column (users/customers may each have multiple use cases so leave some room on
the right side to account for that). You can then expand the column as you move fwd (see image).
For example, going back
to the better wallet, a user might be a working adult who uses a wallet to
store their cash and critical cards (i.e. license, debit/credit cards/business
cards).
At this point, it would
be great to ask more clarifying questions to your interviewer about whether or
not they want to focus on a particular user/customer to save time.
4) Identify Gaps in the
Use Cases
Now that you’ve compiled
a list of various use cases, it’s time to start thinking about how
current products/solutions in the market address these use cases and whether or
not there are any gaps or room for improvement.
Taking a step back, it’s
good to look down your left column of users/customers and think about the
qualities that are special to each one of them.
Like a true product
manager / customer advocate, put yourself in their shoes and think about their
limitations and values.
This will help you to
better identify weak spots in current product offerings. If you want, you can
add a third column next to each use case to help structure the obvious gaps
that you identify.
5) Brainstorm Features /
Improvements
Now that you’ve figured
out the gaps that current products are missing to address user/customer needs,
it’s time to break out that thinking cap and brainstorm solutions to address
these gaps.
Make sure that your
features / improvements match the use cases that you’ve listed. Don’t be afraid
to ask your interviewer if you are on the right track or if they prefer you to
focus on one or two of your ideas.
6) Prioritize and Identify
Trade-offs
With this shiny list of
brainstormed features and improvements, it’s time to prioritize which of these you might focus
on and what the trade-offs would be with each solution.
When you prioritize your
ideas, it’s important to use some sort of decision framework. If you are
focusing on business goals like revenue, it might be
important to evaluate each feature by the ratio of potential revenue generated
vs. the time & cost it would take to develop.
One simple way is to take
the (potential revenue generated – cost to develop ) / time to develop and
sorting your list from top down values.
Once you’ve come up with
this list, think about the pros/cons and trade-offs of choosing to implement
each solution. This lets you automatically play devil’s advocate to your own
ideas to show your interviewer that you are thinking about all facets of the
solution including edge cases and potential negatives.
As an interviewer, I love
to see candidates critically think about their own ideas and tell me the
trade-offs proactively.
7) Summarize your
Recommendation
Whew, you’re almost done
with your product manager interview! Let your interviewer know what your final
choice is and feel free to review how you came to the solution and why it
satisfies a user / customer’s needs.
If you haven’t elaborated
enough already, feel free to reiterate why you chose this solution over the
others on your brainstormed list.
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