Product design question
1. What are the top product initiatives would you consider? 2. How would you measure the performance of your initiative?
- Product design
- Hard
Practice this question out loud. An AI interviewer asks it, follows up like a real interviewer would, and scores your answer. Type or speak.
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What this question tests
Tests prioritization and measurement thinking together, requiring the candidate to pick concrete initiatives and tie each to a specific success metric.
How to approach it
- Clarify the product and business context, since top initiatives depend heavily on stage, growth-focused versus retention-focused.
- Propose two or three specific initiatives rather than a long list, such as improving onboarding activation, deepening a core engagement loop, and reducing a known churn driver.
- For each initiative, state the specific problem it solves and why it's prioritized over other options, using a simple impact-versus-effort framing.
- For each initiative, define one primary success metric, such as activation rate, weekly active usage of the core loop, or churn rate in the affected segment.
- Add a guardrail metric for each, ensuring the initiative doesn't improve one number while quietly hurting another, like activation rising while support tickets spike.
- Set a review cadence, such as evaluating results after one full cycle (a month or a quarter, depending on the metric).
What a strong answer includes
- Names concrete initiatives instead of vague themes like improve growth.
- Pairs every initiative with a specific, matching success metric rather than one blanket metric for everything.
- Uses illustrative numbers as assumptions: assume onboarding activation is currently 35%, targeting a rise to 45% as a concrete goal.
- Adds guardrail metrics, showing awareness that a metric can improve while quietly causing harm elsewhere.
Common mistakes
- Listing initiatives with no clear prioritization logic.
- Giving one generic metric like engagement for every initiative instead of a tailored one each.
- Not defining a timeframe or review point to assess whether the initiatives worked.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you decide which initiative to cut if resources were halved?
- What would make you kill an initiative early?
- How do these metrics roll up to a single north star?
More product design questions
- Design a TV for a car.Google · Product design · Hard
- Design a refrigerator for the blind.Google · Product design · Hard
- Redesign Twitter for eCommerce.Shopify · Product design · Hard
- You are a PM at Flipkart. The company has decided to increase the userbase of age >60 years on the platform. What will you do?Flipkart · Product design · Hard
- Develop a seller score algorithm for Walmart Marketplace.Walmart · Product design · Hard
- Design an application launching in the US marketplace that enables patients to find doctors.Meta · Product design · Hard
Learn the skill behind it
Chapters of the AI PM course that teach what this question tests.
- Chapter 4: Discovery and strategy for AI products
- Chapter 7: AI UX and human oversight: design for a system that is wrong sometimes
- Chapter 14: Get the job: the AI PM interview loop