Product Questions

Product Questions

Designing a Product

  1. Ask questions to understand the problem.
  2. Provide a Structure.
  3. Identify the Users and Customers.
  4. What are the use cases? Why are they using this product? What are their goals?
  5. How well is the current product doing for their use cases? Are there obvious weak spots?
  6. What features or changes would improve those weak spots?
  7. Wrap things up.


Improving a Product

  1. What is the goal of the product? What problem is it solving for the user?
  2. What problems does the product face?
  3. How would you solve this problem?
  4. How would you implement these solutions?
  5. How would you validate your solution?


Favorite Product

  1. What problems does the product solve for the user?
  2. How does the product accomplish these goals? What makes it “neat”? What makes users fall in love with the product?
  3. How does it compare to the alternatives?
  4. How would you improve it?



  1. Select Products
    – online product
    – physical product
    – recently purchased product
    – favorite product
    – well designed product
    – company or team’s product
  2. Understand Key Metrics
    – Users / Traffic
    – Acquisition / Conversion
    – Activation / Engagement
    – Retention
    – Referral rates
    – Revenue
    – Costs
  3. Analyze Each Product
    – Users and Goals
    – Strengths
    – Challenges / Focuses
    – Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?
    – Priorities and Values
    – Competitors
    – Tradeoffs


Tips and Tricks

  1. Have an Opinion
  2. Wow the interviewer
  3. Use the whiteboard
  4. Don’t overbuild
  5. Don’t complain that you need more research
  6. Think about the business too
  7. Be open about the tradeoffs