Product design question
As a PM for a major home appliance company, how would you design a refrigerator for the visually impaired?
- Product design
- Hard
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What this question tests
Accessibility-focused hardware product design for a specific disability segment in an everyday appliance.
How to approach it
- Clarify scope, a new refrigerator model or an accessible mode added to an existing line, since cost implications differ.
- Identify core jobs to be done, checking food expiration, finding items inside, and operating temperature controls independently.
- Identify pain points, visual-only expiration labels, unlabeled shelf organization, and touchscreen controls with no tactile or audio feedback.
- Prioritize the highest impact fix, likely audio feedback for controls and a voice-queryable inventory, since these unlock independent daily use.
- Propose solutions, voice control for temperature and settings, audio expiration alerts via a companion app, and tactile shelf labels.
- Define success metrics, task completion rate for core tasks, e.g. checking expiration, compared to a sighted user baseline, and customer satisfaction among visually impaired users.
What a strong answer includes
- Prioritizes voice and audio feedback as the highest leverage fix, since touchscreen-only controls are the biggest independence barrier in modern appliances.
- Proposes a concrete inventory tracking mechanism, e.g. a companion app with voice query, rather than vague 'make it accessible' language.
- Considers tactile solutions, like braille or raised labels, alongside digital ones, recognizing not all users have a smartphone paired to the fridge.
- Sets a measurable outcome, task completion time versus a sighted baseline, grounding the design in real usability data.
Common mistakes
- Proposing only visual UI changes, like larger text, which do not help fully blind users.
- Ignoring cost implications of hardware changes like voice control chips.
- Not defining any way to measure whether the accessibility goal was actually achieved.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you test this with real visually impaired users.
- What would you prioritize if you could only ship one feature.
- How would you balance the added cost against mainstream pricing.
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
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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