Product design question
As a PM at Google, how would you design a connected car experience?
- Product design
- Hard
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What this question tests
Product sense for a hardware-plus-software ecosystem where safety is a hard design constraint, not just feature richness.
How to approach it
- Clarify scope: an Android Auto-style software layer for existing cars versus a full Google-branded car OS.
- Pick the user: daily commuters already using Google Maps and Assistant, Google's real wedge into the car.
- Identify pain points: switching between phone and car UI, safe hands-free control, and stale traffic or charging info.
- Prioritize by safety and frequency: voice-first navigation and proactive rerouting beat entertainment extras.
- Propose deeper Assistant integration for hands-free tasks, messaging, calendar, charging stops, surfaced contextually by trip stage.
- Define success as fewer phone pickups while driving and more voice-initiated actions per trip.
What a strong answer includes
- Anchors on distracted-driving safety as the primary constraint, not feature count.
- Names Google's real advantage, Maps data and Assistant, over building a full car OS from scratch.
- Gives a concrete scenario: proactively suggesting a charging stop when battery drops below 20% on a route.
- Proposes a measurable safety proxy: reduced screen-touch events per trip.
Common mistakes
- Designing a flashy infotainment system while ignoring driver distraction.
- Not clarifying software-only versus full hardware, which changes the whole scope.
Likely follow-up questions
- How do you handle drivers who don't have an Android phone?
- What would you cut if you only had one quarter to ship an MVP?
More product design questions
- Design a TV for a car.Google · Product design · Hard
- Design a refrigerator for the blind.Google · Product design · Hard
- 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
More questions from Google
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