How to crack Product Design questions?

Every product manager faces design sense questions in their interviews. In fact, they are the most common type of questions faced by product managers in interviews (asked about 65% of times). It is important that you understand the problem statement, use a user-centric approach with a relevant framework while solutioning to be able to answer better.

The general framework and step-by-step approach to follow is:

· Clarify the problem statement and problem space.

· Define your target users.

· Identify the pain points of your target audience.

· Brainstorm solutions to identified pain points.

· Define a vision to brainstormed solutions.

· Prioritize features based on the vision, goal, and impact.

· Define success metrics.

· Evaluate and recap.

Let’s understand each step in details.

Clarify the problem statement and problem space.

Push to clarify the vagueness of the given problem statement. Ask specific questions to gather context and understand the problem space that will help you in designing the solution. Questions like “What do you mean by better?”, or “What is the timeline we’re considering in solving this problem?” are a good starting point but be prepared to receive vague answers to your questions. In such cases, make assumptions on your own and state those to your interviewer so they have a chance to correct you if you’re moving off-track.

Define your target users.

Define subsets of users that you feel are the majority of people facing this problem statement. From the subsets, pick an interesting subset for a deep dive. Users can be segmented using various ways:

· Demographics like age, income level, etc.

· Geographic location

· Behavioral segmentation

Follow the rule of three. Make at least three different segments of users in a way that is meaningful to the problem statement at hand. Make sure the users in all three segments have very different needs. After listing the users, pick a segment that interests you and articulate why the chosen segment is a valuable segment for discussion.

Identify the pain points of your target audience.

Consider goals that your users have while using your product. Any, and every obstacle they face in achieving the goal is a pain point. If nothing is blocking users from achieving the goal but some friction clearly exists, you have uncovered an opportunity area. Take an empathetic view and step into the shoes of these users, and you will be able to get a more realistic view. Having an empathetic approach is a key PM skill, so be sure to articulate that to your interviewer in your discussion. Again, as a rule of thumb, list down three important pain points of the users that are worth solving today.

Brainstorm solutions to identified pain points.

This is a tricky, yet important part of your design discussion. For the listed pain points, you now need to brainstorm ideas that can remove the obstacles in question and help the user in meeting their end goal. List at least three ideas and don’t be afraid to get creative here. The interviewers want to see the level of creativity and the passion for the product. Reflect on your identified users and their pain points and see if the idea you have really solves the problem. It’s okay to come up with more ideas, and eliminate them during the discussion, but you need at least three major solutions to the identified problem statement. Try to stay user-centric when coming up with solutions to avoid coming up with ideas that appeal to you personally.

Define a vision to brainstormed solutions.

Pick the strongest and most impactful solution from the one you listed during the brainstorming. Explain why you think this solution will be the most effective way of solving the problem. Let the interviewer know what made you come to this conclusion. Once you have the preferred solution, define the vision of how this solution will help users today, and in the next 5–10 years. It is important to articulate a clear vision for the solution.

Prioritize features based on the vision, goal, and impact.

Once you have a compelling product vision, it’s time to prioritize features. Walk through the entire user journey where a user interacts with the product. This will help you understand where your solution fits in with the user experience, which will in turn help you with the prioritization of features. There are several techniques, such as MoSCoW, Kano, RICE, etc., to use when prioritizing features, however you’re not expected to use them in the interviews as long as you can clearly articulate how the prioritized features delivers value to the goal and the vision you defined earlier.

Define success metrics.

Once you have the list of features you’ll build for the solution, provide the metrics that will define the success of your solution. There are several success metrics you can enlist to the interviewer, but picking the right ones for your solution is important.

Evaluate and recap.

When wrapping up, summarize the overall design, starting from the problem space, the defined users, their pain points, the defined solution, the vision of the solution and success metrics to track. Once discussed, spend a few minutes evaluating your design and focusing on the next steps. The next steps could include tradeoffs you made, alternate use cases and edge cases, a moonshot solution if you had more time and feasibility.