Don’t tie yourself into knots with your product goal — Interview power skills
Your product design interview will be dead on arrival if you forget to make this one thing central to your answer.
When you’re asked to “build a product for X” or answer any other product design interview question, your objective is simple: make a great argument about what to build based on your authentic desire to help people.
First, get the basics
The first step on that journey is identifying the product’s goal. Not only is this critical for presenting a logical argument, but it’s also one of the few mandatory parts of the answer. Your recruiter might have even pointed this out when they explained the interview format. So this is important!
The basic way to define your goal is to discuss background information that contributes to the goal and they say what it is. There are lots of background info to potentially include: how the product “aligns” with the company mission; how well it plays to the company’s strengths; whether to prioritize engagement, acquisition, retention or monetization; competitors in the space etc. If these considerations help explain your goal, then include them otherwise drop then.
Although some considerations (like mission alignment) are required by certain companies if a company is included in the prompt, in general, background info is only useful if they are important to understand what products make sense to build. Don’t include content just to check boxes! This content should matter to your argument. Plan to reference background info later, such as when prioritizing solutions. Remember, if you say it, it have should have some effect your final choice of product idea.
Avoid jumping into a trap
However there are some considerations that are important but should not appear in this section: that’s anything that “jumps” into a later section. That includes what problems exist in the marketplace and possible solutions might be appropriate. This is a critical mistake because it undermines the entire rest of your discussion: why step through your argument if you came to a conclusion right at the beginning?
Here’s an example goal for the popular question “design a parking lot” that jumps ahead:
Parking matters to people because they want to get where they want to go fast. So my goal is to build an app that helps people find parking fast.
There are a few problems with this. First, it presumes a solution. Nobody said the solution needed to be an app, so you’ve just locked yourself into building another smartphone app. Say goodbye to building the feature right into cars!
Second, by asserting that people want to get places fast, you’ve handicapped your ability to come up with differentiated groups of people whose motivations fall outside of speed. Forget people who want safety, or ease, or accessibility!
Maximum people focus
There’s a simpler way to approach goal-setting. Remember that our goal is to demonstrate an authentic desire to help people — in other words, empathy. Here’s how to do that:
Explain why it matters to people. Focus your goal discussion first on what people fundamentally need out of your product area (“parking”) and why it matters to them. This sets the stage for your product goal and demonstrates that you understand people. Speak from the heart here! Here’s an example:
The first thing I want to discuss is why parking matters to people. For many, vehicles like cars are the only way to get around, and any time you take a trip with a car you’ll have to park it. I can imagine that across the world people could park tens of millions times per day in total. There’s no doubt that people want this to be a good experience, so this is a great area to look for ways to make life better for people.
Define a People Only goal. Now that you’ve discussed why the product area matters to people (and any additional background information that you need to answer the question), define a goal that is people-focused but is otherwise as generic as possible. This may seem counterintuitive, but by focusing the goal on people while avoiding specifics, you leave yourself open to talk about solutions and pain points in the appropriate sections later in the answer. Here’s an example:
I’m going to build a product for parking that makes parking a better experience so that people can better enjoy whatever they want to do at their destination.
The best part about the goal structure is that it is highly repeatable and always keeps the focus on people. There is an equivalent goal for any product design prompt.
The basic pattern is: [prompt restatement][ success criteria][people impact]. As long as you keep the success criteria broad but falsifiable, you’re in. At the end of your answer, will be able to say whether your product help people or not?
With this technique, you will.
Now that you know how to come up with a flexible but clear goal, share your best in the comments. Like this post? Clap and share.
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