A product supervisor’s core duties embody working with a workforce to design, construct, ship, and repeatedly enhance a product. Throughout product supervisor interviews, most firms like to hone in in your means to execute in opposition to these duties 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’d design X product for Y person”
Some widespread instance questions we’ve incessantly heard embody:
- Design a pen for an astronaut
- Design an alarm clock for a blind particular person
- Design an elevator for a person in a wheelchair
Whenever you reply most of these product design questions as a part of the product supervisor interview, you must at all times strategy them with a framework in thoughts. Under is one which we extremely advocate:
The Product Design Interview Framework
1) Ask Clarifying Questions
Bear in mind, there’s no level persevering with with a solution should you haven’t totally grasped the state of affairs.
I can’t rely the of occasions I’ve requested a easy product design query to a candidate who then proceeded to provide me a prolonged five-minute reply earlier than I noticed 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 anticipate the candidate to first ask clarifying questions akin to who the pockets is likely to be utilized by, or what “higher” means within the context of a pockets.
Bear 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 crimson flag and tells me that he/she would design merchandise with out understanding what a person really wants.
2) Talk Your Reply Define
There’s nothing worse for an interviewer than attempting to observe a candidate’s unstructured practice of thought when responding to a product query.
It’s essential to reveal that you’ve taken time to comprehend the state of affairs after which lay out some groundwork on how you intend to reply this query.
Exhibiting that you’re organized by structuring out your solutions to these questions will put your interviewer comfortable and hold your ideas in line so that you just don’t ramble or go off on tangents.
An instance of the way you may strategy that is to say “Now that I’ve understood the scope of this product, I’d like to put out how I’d strategy 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 circumstances.
Third, I’m going to brainstorm some options and consider these options in opposition to the enterprise targets I’ve listed.
Lastly, I’ll focus on trade-offs and summarize my suggestion.”
3) Determine the Customers / Prospects 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 prospects and customers are and their use circumstances. Do not forget that for sure merchandise, the shopper and the person of the product could also be totally different folks. For instance, within the academic app/video games market, mother and father 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/prospects on the left column, and their respective use circumstances on the appropriate column (customers/prospects might every have a number of use circumstances so go away some room on the appropriate aspect to account for that).
For instance, going again to the higher pockets, a person is likely to be a working grownup who makes use of a pockets to retailer their money and demanding playing cards (i.e. license, debit/bank cards/enterprise playing cards).
At this level, it could be nice to ask extra clarifying inquiries to your interviewer about whether or not or not they need to concentrate on a selected person/buyer to avoid wasting time.
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4) Determine Gaps within the Use Instances
Now that you just’ve compiled a listing of varied use circumstances, it’s time to consider how present merchandise/options available in the market tackle these use circumstances 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/prospects and take into consideration the qualities which are particular to every certainly one of them.
Like a real product supervisor/buyer advocate, put your self of their footwear and take into consideration their limitations and values.
This can assist you to higher determine weak spots in present product choices. In order for you, you possibly can add a 3rd column subsequent to every use case to assist construction the plain gaps that you just determine.
5) Brainstorm Options / Enhancements
Now that you just’ve discovered the gaps that present merchandise are lacking to handle person/buyer wants, it’s time to interrupt out that considering cap and brainstorm options to handle these gaps.
Be sure that your options / enhancements match the use circumstances 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 concentrate on one or two of your concepts.
6) Prioritize and Determine Commerce-offs
With this shiny checklist of brainstormed options and enhancements, it’s time to prioritize which of those you may concentrate on and what the trade-offs could be with every resolution.
Whenever you prioritize your concepts, it’s essential to make use of some form of determination framework. In case you are specializing in enterprise targets like income, it is likely to be essential to guage every characteristic by the ratio of potential income generated vs. the time & value it could take to develop.
One easy manner is to take the (potential income generated – value to develop ) / time to develop and sorting your checklist from top-down values.
When you’ve provide you with this checklist, take into consideration the professionals/cons and trade-offs of selecting to implement every resolution. This allows you to mechanically play satan’s advocate to your personal concepts to point out your interviewer that you’re fascinated with all aspects of the answer together with edge circumstances 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 completed together with your product supervisor interview. Let your interviewer know what your remaining selection is and be happy to assessment the way you got here to the answer and why it satisfies a person/buyer’s wants.
For those who haven’t elaborated sufficient already, be happy to reiterate why you selected this resolution over the others in your brainstormed checklist.
Congratulations, you’ve completed your first product design query.
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