Product design question
Add a voice command feature to Quora.
- Quora
- Product design
- Medium
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What this question tests
Product design for adding a new interaction modality to an existing product, focused on a specific use case rather than novelty.
How to approach it
- Identify the user: Quora readers and askers who might use voice in hands-busy contexts like driving or cooking, or for accessibility reasons.
- Name the pain point: typing long, nuanced questions or searching for specific topics is slow and awkward on mobile in hands-busy moments.
- Scope the feature: start narrow, voice search to find existing questions and answers, and voice dictation to ask a new question, rather than full conversational voice interaction.
- Design the flow: a microphone icon in the search bar triggers voice-to-text, which then runs through Quora's existing search and matching system unchanged.
- Prioritize voice search over voice answering (listening to answers read aloud) first, since search has a clearer, higher frequency use case to validate demand.
- Define success as adoption rate of the voice search entry point and search success rate (click-through to a relevant answer) compared with typed search.
What a strong answer includes
- Scopes a broad prompt down to one specific, testable use case, voice search, instead of over-building a full conversational assistant.
- Explains why voice search should come before voice-read answers, sequencing based on likely usage frequency and implementation risk.
- Compares the new feature's success against the existing typed search baseline, giving a clear bar for whether it is actually adding value.
Common mistakes
- Over-scoping into a full conversational AI assistant when a narrower voice search feature would validate demand faster.
- Ignoring accessibility as a legitimate use case in favor of only framing this as a hands-busy convenience feature.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you handle a voice query that is ambiguous or poorly transcribed?
- Would you prioritize this for mobile only, or also for desktop and smart speakers?
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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