Product design question
As a product manager at DoorDash, how would you design a feature to help customers track their orders more accurately in real time?
- DoorDash
- Product design
- Medium
Practice this question out loud. An AI interviewer asks it, follows up like a real interviewer would, and scores your answer. Type or speak.
Start a mock interview on this question · Mock interview from a job description
What this question tests
Product design for a trust critical, well known pain point, requiring a mechanism level answer, not just add a map.
How to approach it
- Identify the pain point: ETAs are often wrong because they do not account for restaurant prep time variability or live traffic.
- Propose splitting the ETA into stages, order confirmed, prep started, prep complete, picked up, in transit, each with its own estimate.
- Use restaurant specific historical prep time data to improve the prep stage estimate instead of a flat default.
- Use live courier GPS and traffic data for the transit stage estimate, updating dynamically rather than a static countdown.
- Define success: reduction in ETA prediction error, and drop in where is my order support contacts.
What a strong answer includes
- Breaks the single ETA into stage specific estimates, correctly diagnosing prep time variability drives most inaccuracy.
- Proposes using restaurant level historical data to fix the prep stage estimate, the piece most apps under model.
- Uses a concrete accuracy metric and a support cost proxy metric, tying UX to a measurable business cost.
Common mistakes
- Proposing only a map or live tracking UI improvement without addressing why the underlying ETA is wrong.
- No metric tied to actual prediction accuracy, only to feature usage.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you handle restaurants with highly inconsistent prep times?
- How would you communicate uncertainty in the ETA to users without eroding trust?
More product design questions
- How will you improve the worst customer experience post a successful order placement on Instacart?DoorDash · Product design · Medium
- How would you solve OpenTable's worst customer experience?DoorDash · Product design · Hard
- How would you design a loyalty program for DoorDash to increase customer retention?DoorDash · Product design · Medium
- Which app have you used for finding an apartment? How would you improve it?DoorDash · Product design · Easy
- How would you add a health option for DoorDash?DoorDash · Product design · Medium
- How would you improve DoorDash's post booking experience once the user has ordered their meal?DoorDash · Product design · Medium
More questions from DoorDash
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