Product design question
A huge number of Americans might become homeless in the next 5 years. You have 100 days to come with a plan/solution to eradicate or alleviate the homeless situation in the US. Where do you start?
- Product design
- Hard
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What this question tests
Ability to structure an ambiguous, large-scale social problem into a scoped, actionable plan under a tight deadline.
How to approach it
- Clarify the mandate, in 100 days you can only scope and pilot, not solve homelessness nationally, so set expectations accordingly.
- Segment the homeless population, chronically homeless, newly homeless due to job loss, and at-risk families, since interventions differ.
- Prioritize a segment with the highest leverage in 100 days, e.g. at-risk families who can be kept housed with rental assistance before they become homeless.
- Propose a pilot, a rapid rental assistance and case management program in one city, in partnership with local housing authorities.
- Define what happens in the 100 days, weeks 1 to 2 research and partner selection, weeks 3 to 8 pilot design and launch, weeks 9 to 14 measure and report results.
- Define success metrics, number of households kept housed and cost per household versus existing shelter costs.
What a strong answer includes
- Scopes the 100 days honestly, framing it as a pilot and data-gathering phase, not a claim to solve the whole crisis.
- Picks prevention, keeping at-risk families housed, as higher leverage than trying to serve the hardest chronic cases first.
- Names real world partners, local housing authorities and nonprofits, since a tech company cannot deliver housing alone.
- Defines a clear cost comparison metric, cost per household helped versus existing emergency shelter cost, to justify scaling the approach.
Common mistakes
- Claiming the 100 day plan will solve homelessness rather than scoping a realistic pilot.
- Treating the homeless population as one uniform group.
- Proposing a purely technological fix with no housing or policy partners.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you measure success at the end of 100 days.
- Which city would you pilot this in and why.
- How would you scale this beyond the pilot.
More product design questions
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- How do you design a camera for the elderly?Google · Product design · Medium
- Redesign Twitter for eCommerce.Shopify · Product design · Hard
- How would you go about designing a new location sharing app for Google?Google · Product design · Medium
- How would you improve Google Home?Google · Product design · Easy
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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