How Would You Improve X Product? Mock Q&A (Interview Prep by Neil)

Neil Gurnani, member of the Recruiting Team!

This interviewer is trying to get a feel for 3 things:

1. Your understanding of the current product
2. Your ability to assess the features of the product
3. Your creativity in solving potential problems / pain points with the product

With that in mind, here’s a step by step breakdown of one way to approach the question, using Dropbox as an example for a favorite product:

Step 1: Repeat the problem to the interviewer and ask any follow-up questions as needed to establish clear communication

Step 2: Outline your answer

Ex: Before I explain why it’s my favorite app, let’s quickly review how Dropbox currently works. Dropbox has stated that its objective is not just to allow people to store and share files easily across multiple devices, but rather to simplify life for people around the world. While Dropbox started as a cloud storage solution, it has since evolved into a collaborative workspace solutions provider. It offers features that businesses use to help their teams to collaborate on projects online — in real time.

Step 3: Figure out pain points & problems with the current Product.

Ex: The main problems of Dropbox can be summarized with the following:

• Difficulty in tracking a variety of several files across different projects in an organized manner
• Concern about ensuring right document and access management of different users within and across organization
• Concern of important updates getting lost in the noise of transactional day-to-day updates

Step 4: Select a user type

Ex: I would like to focus on the users at Senior/Leadership positions within the team. This is because they help drive decisions within the team through prioritization calls, resolving dependencies, and at time resolving debates and conflicts.

Step 5: Proposing solutions to improve the product for the target user type

Ex: The solutions that I recommend is to create a dashboard that summarizes the meaningful and essential information across all projects for a team member.

1. View of all projects files that are behind their schedule (against plan) with ability to navigate to projects dashboards for more granular details.
2. View of all tasks that behind their deadlines along with owners for their tasks
3. Ability to export files stored to a ppt, doc, PDF or a separate Dropbox paper — to run team meetings, weekly, monthly reviews etc.

Step 6: Prioritize most Important Features & Summarize Improved Product

Ex: The improvement recommendations that I have made focuses on reducing the noise of all transactional day-to-day updates — from multiple team members working on the project — and creating a more synchronous and centralized dashboard of the most relevant documents, files, and information that individuals can consume and respond to efficiently.