A guide on how to answer Product Questions

Product questions are the heart and soul of PM interviews. They’re the most unique to the product management role, and, in my opinion, the most fun. In general, product sense of design questions test your:

  • Creative ability
  • Understanding of user-centric design
  • Knowledge of industry trends
  • Product vision
  • Strategy
  • Passion

Product sense questions most take the following form of

  • Design a product to handle a problem X
  • Improve an existing product Y

The above 2 are the most common type of product sense questions that you’ll be asked. The task here is to think deeply about the problem space and then brainstorm solutions and detail out a few features from scratch. Some sample questions:

  • Design a smart sock.
  • How would you redesign the 911 system?
  • Design a product or feature that addresses toxic “trolling” on the internet.

A framework I follow to answer these type of questions is:

  1. Ask clarifying questions and state any assumptions. Stating assumptions is very important as it indicates that you are thinking through multiple aspects. **Some questions that you might want to clarify are:
    1. Why do we want to do this?
    2. Is there any particular reason for building this product or considering this improvement? Maybe we have gotten some feedback from customers, or there is some new information in the market. This will help you answer the first section of the framework.
    3. Do we have any constraints - resources, time or geography to consider as we build this solution?
    4. Are we considering building a software (all platforms/ web/ mobile?) or a hardware solution or am I free to choose?

  2. Goal for the product to be set. It should be clearly stated in one line on “why” we are building this product. We could use the org vision (if it exists) to define the user goal. Always very clearly state in 1 line what the goal of the product is.

    For example, as a Facebook PM, design a dating app. We know Facebook wants “to connect communities and bring the world together,” so a reasonable user goal for a FB dating app would be “to help people form meaningful and deeper connections for long-term dating.”

    There could be some other long-term strategic goals which is fulfilled for the main platform through the new product like which are worth mentioning and confirming with the interviewer:

    • Growth - acquiring new users
    • Engagement and Retention - increase in the stickiness of the platform
    • Monetisation - may not be directly at play here
  3. User segments to be defined and one of them prioritised. Empathize with who we’re focusing on and come up with multiple user segments. Think about the user segment’s lifestyle and current behaviour on how they currently solve the problem. The different parameters that you can use to think about user segments:
    1. Think about age (elderly, kids)
    2. Think about the use case (athletics, fashion accessory - how is the product used?)
    3. Think about usage frequency (sceptics, rookies, die hard - how often is the product used?)

    Example: A dating app could have the following user segments: 1)heterosexual population 2)homosexual population. In order to prioritise one of these segments, consider 1) how big is the (TAM) total addressable market? and 2) how acute is the problem for each segment?

  4. Pain points / opportunities to be defined for the selected user segment — what are some areas of difficulty for the user segment?

    Practice this a lot because this is the most critical part. Breakdown the user journey and then think about pain points at each step. Eg: Build an app to improve the experience of moving to a new city. User journey and pain points for a selected user segment of New-Grads:

    1. Flying themselves to the new city - Solved problem / no identifiable pain points as it involves booking the tickets which the company does
    2. Getting their belongings (high volume) - Logistics issues and when to transfer and where? You typically schedule this to come later
    3. Finding a permanent home in 30days - Big problem being looked at by the likes of Zoopla, rent a room etc.
    4. Setting up the home - Buy furniture, decor and make it your home away from home
    5. Build a social life in a new city - make a new friend circle, find places to hangout
    6. Figure out the admin work - setup/move bank accounts, register with your nearest doctor, discover gyms nearby etc.

    Now try to narrow the focus and see what’s the highest priority problem. Sprinkle in some competitive info for this space - there are already apps solving for discovering connections; think of how our product will stand out - pick up a unique problem. Inorder to prioritise one pain point from this list, we’ll pick the pain point that causes the highest impact to the goal that we had set, so look at it from 2 lenses:

    1. How acute is this problem?
    2. How frequent is the problem? Setting up a home seems like an acute problem.
  5. Ideate and solve by building features/products that address the above pain points. Focus on the user experience and describe it in detail. How does it work? What value does it provide? There’s no strict formula for this, but I recommend keeping it punchy and concise. Start by naming the 2-3 solutions clearly and self-explanatorily, then dive into a brief description of each. To make this even better, think on aspects like the below (these are not exhaustive but just to make you think!):
    • Add a unique insight that ties back to customer needs. For example, when considering furniture rental solutions, we might recognize and say that today’s millennials want to conform to society while maintaining their individuality. They desire a “home away from home” feeling.
    • Suggest how you would market the product - Engage influencers to curate pre-defined themes for the rental home
    • Suggest if the solution can be expanded to outside the target that you took. eg. new families, recent retirees moving cities can use the same solution if we adapt if by.
    • Business model innovation: Offer pre-defined clusters and themes (modern, minimal, boho/artsy) through partnerships with apartment complexes, including a percentage rent add-on for furnished units.
  6. Solution prioritisation according to the the highest return on investment (ROI) where ROI is measured through:
    • Impact - impact to the goal that we had set out
    • Effort - resources and time that will be used to build the particular solution
    • Tradeoffs / Risks of the solution - the best practice is to sprinkle these while you are describing your solutions and ask if the interviewer wants you to go into the details here.
  7. Summarize

Some interviewers may want to hear you spend more time on user empathy, while others might want to chat in-depth about the technical feasibility of your feature, so, check with the interviewer and let them guide you throughout the answer.

Common Errors

Here are three of the most common errors with product sense questions:

  1. Brainstorming small
    When you get asked a product question, the interviewer wants you to think big, creatively, and give some deep insights about the industry in question. If you’re a good PM candidate, you’ll know that everything has constraints and tradeoffs. Sometimes, candidates will let these constraints inhibit their creativity, reducing what could have been an innovative, revolutionary answer into something very bland and obvious.

  2. Trying to get the correct answer
    Most PM interviews don’t have the right answer, so stop trying to get the right answer. Instead, focus on the right process. Let’s say the interviewer asks “Design a future microwave.” At the end of the day, the interviewer doesn’t have a specific answer in mind. The interviewer wants you to take them to a solution that addresses a clear pain point or opportunity, and persuade them that this is a compelling product. Especially with product questions, your goal is creativity, not accuracy.

  3. Lack of passion
    I can’t stress this one enough. Show the interviewer that you care. Show the interviewer you’re excited to talk about products. Show the interviewer you’re excited to brainstorm. Show the interviewer that you’ve critically thought about technology. Passion can come out via your tone of voice, thoughtfulness of response, and general confidence.

Tips to better your overall answer

  • Be excited and show positivity throughout the interview!
  • Enumerate since it helps the interviewer keep track of the count of points- one, two, three.
  • Prioritisation parameters should be punchy. Stop beating around the bush and call them out in a succinct manner!
  • When talking about the solutions, go broad then deep i.e state very concisely each of the n solutions first and then go deeper into explaining each one of them from the top.
  • Be concise once you do prioritisation. Don’t explain the parameters again for every solution. Check with the interviewer.
  • Give anecdotes always. Wear the user hat!
  • Better your understanding about segments. Example: elderly segment doesn’t like being called elderly (be empathetic), and state clearly what you understand currently and what you want to know more about them to take certain decisions. Read up about certain user segments (students, professionals, elderly etc.) and what other digital products they use and why.
  • Goal needs to be clearly stated in one line and can come in after pain points / solutions if it’s not clear at the start.

Improving your approach further

Improving your product intuition will go a long way in honing your ability to answer product sense questions well. A typical PM framework covers competition, experience/design, economics, technology, market, user segments and business models. The best PMs never get lost trying to do all of them well. They instead ask themselves, “given the nature of the problem space, what are the most important components I must nail in order for the app to be successful?” They pick out the top 3-4 components that have the biggest impact on the success of the app, and focus on them heavily.

Let’s say your product sense interview question asks you to build an apartment hunting app. Here, the interviewer needs to hear that in order for the app to be successful, the three most important components are (1) business model, (2) competition, and (3) user segment.

  1. Business model: You must mention that it’s a two-sided marketplace and that a solution must resolve marketplace-inherent issues like the cold-start problem.
  2. Competition: You should recognise that apartment hunting has many incumbents (e.g. Craigslist, Zillow), so meaningful product differentiation is key.
  3. User segments: Apartment hunting is a space that spans many needs and user segments (e.g. college students to families), so it’s important for the solution to focus on a narrow and clearly defined user segment.

Sample practice questions

  1. How would you improve google maps?
  2. How would you reduce gmail storage size?
  3. How would you improve restaurant search for a food delivery app?
  4. What’s you fav google product? What do you like and not like about it?
  5. If you were to build the next killer feature for facebook, what would it be?
  6. If you are the PM in the Google search web spam team, how would you detect duplicate websites?
  7. Design Fb product for children
  8. Describe how you would build a FB product in the healthcare space.
  9. If you are the PM for Apple IOS what would you launch in the next update? If Elon found you and made you the next GM, would you use spacex to launch air travel around the world
  10. How will you design an app for finding doctors in a new city.
  11. Reimagine Facebook for TV.
  12. How would you improve groups on Facebook?

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