A product supervisor’s core obligations embrace working with a group to design, construct, ship, and repeatedly enhance a product. Throughout product supervisor interviews, most firms like to hone in in your means to execute towards these obligations by asking the way you may take into consideration designing a product.
The favored product design query normally takes type in one thing like:
“Stroll me by means of how you’ll design X product for Y consumer”
Some frequent instance questions we’ve ceaselessly heard embrace:
- Design a pen for an astronaut
- Design an alarm clock for a blind particular person
- Design an elevator for a person in a wheelchair
If you reply a majority of these product design questions as a part of the product supervisor interview, it is best to at all times method them with a framework in thoughts. Beneath is one which we extremely advocate:
The Product Design Interview Framework
1) Ask Clarifying Questions
Keep in mind, there’s no level persevering with with a solution when you haven’t totally grasped the state of affairs.
I can’t rely the of instances I’ve requested a easy product design query to a candidate who then proceeded to present me a prolonged five-minute reply earlier than I spotted that the candidate had by no means used the product earlier than.
If I requested a candidate to stroll me by means of how he/she may design a greater pockets, I count on the candidate to first ask clarifying questions reminiscent of who the pockets could be utilized by, or what “higher” means within the context of a pockets.
Keep in mind, product managers, don’t simply dive headfirst into launching a product with out first understanding the entire state of affairs and the enterprise targets.
A candidate who doesn’t ask clarifying questions is a giant pink flag and tells me that he/she would design merchandise with out understanding what a consumer actually wants.
2) Talk Your Reply Define
There’s nothing worse for an interviewer than making an attempt to comply with a candidate’s unstructured prepare of thought when responding to a product query.
It’s essential to display that you’ve got taken time to comprehend the state of affairs after which lay out some groundwork on how you propose to reply this query.
Displaying that you’re organized by structuring out your solutions to these questions will put your interviewer relaxed and maintain your ideas in line so that you just don’t ramble or go off on tangents.
An instance of the way you may method that is to say “Now that I’ve understood the scope of this product, I’d like to put out how I would method this design query.
First, I’m going to re-iterate what my enterprise targets are.
Second, I’ll determine my buyer base and their use instances.
Third, I’m going to brainstorm some options and consider these options towards the enterprise targets I’ve listed.
Lastly, I’ll talk about trade-offs and summarize my advice.”
3) Establish the Customers / Clients and their Use Instances
Though you might need calmly touched upon this whereas asking some clarifying questions, this step is essential to locking down precisely who the product’s clients and customers are and their use instances. Do not forget that for sure merchandise, the client and the consumer of the product could also be completely different folks. For instance, within the academic app/video games market, dad and mom are sometimes the shoppers who purchase these apps / video games for his or her kids to make use of.
I’d advocate drawing a 2-column desk on a whiteboard or piece of paper with: your customers/clients on the left column, and their respective use instances on the appropriate column (customers/clients could every have a number of use instances so go away some room on the appropriate aspect to account for that).
For instance, going again to the higher pockets, a consumer could be a working grownup who makes use of a pockets to retailer their money and significant playing cards (i.e. license, debit/bank cards/enterprise playing cards).
At this level, it might be nice to ask extra clarifying inquiries to your interviewer about whether or not or not they wish to give attention to a selected consumer/buyer to avoid wasting time.
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4) Establish Gaps within the Use Instances
Now that you just’ve compiled a listing of assorted use instances, it’s time to consider how present merchandise/options out there tackle these use instances and whether or not or not there are any gaps or room for enchancment.
Taking a step again, it’s good to look down your left column of customers/clients and take into consideration the qualities which can be particular to every one in every of them.
Like a real product supervisor/buyer advocate, put your self of their sneakers and take into consideration their limitations and values.
This may make it easier to to raised determine weak spots in present product choices. If you’d like, you possibly can add a 3rd column subsequent to every use case to assist construction the apparent gaps that you just determine.
5) Brainstorm Options / Enhancements
Now that you just’ve found out the gaps that present merchandise are lacking to deal with consumer/buyer wants, it’s time to interrupt out that considering cap and brainstorm options to deal with these gaps.
Be sure that your options / enhancements match the use instances that you just’ve listed. Don’t be afraid to ask your interviewer in case you are heading in the right direction or if they like you to give attention to one or two of your concepts.
6) Prioritize and Establish Commerce-offs
With this shiny record of brainstormed options and enhancements, it’s time to prioritize which of those you may give attention to and what the trade-offs could be with every answer.
If you prioritize your concepts, it’s vital to make use of some kind of choice framework. In case you are specializing in enterprise targets like income, it could be vital to judge every function by the ratio of potential income generated vs. the time & price it might take to develop.
One easy means is to take the (potential income generated – price to develop ) / time to develop and sorting your record from top-down values.
When you’ve give you this record, take into consideration the professionals/cons and trade-offs of selecting to implement every answer. This allows you to robotically play satan’s advocate to your individual concepts to indicate your interviewer that you’re occupied with all aspects of the answer together with edge instances and potential negatives.
As an interviewer, I like to see candidates critically take into consideration their very own concepts and inform me the trade-offs proactively.
7) Summarize your Advice
Whew, you’re nearly performed together with your product supervisor interview. Let your interviewer know what your remaining selection is and be happy to evaluate the way you got here to the answer and why it satisfies a consumer/buyer’s wants.
If you happen to haven’t elaborated sufficient already, be happy to reiterate why you selected this answer over the others in your brainstormed record.
Congratulations, you’ve completed your first product design query.
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