Product design question
At the end of any event (Sports event, Concerts, New Year Event etc.), there is a rush of people leaving the venue all at once and there is a mismatch in demand & supply for Uber. Surge pricing is not so effective in managing it and it also gets us bad press. You are a PM at Uber and have been asked to solve this problem. What product interventions can you introduce here?
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 intervention design for a demand-supply mismatch causing PR and trust issues.
How to approach it
- Clarify the problem: surge pricing solves the supply and demand math but generates bad press and rider distrust at predictable moments.
- Propose pre-scheduled pickup requests before the event ends, converting unpredictable demand into plannable supply.
- Propose driver staging zones with pre-positioning based on predicted demand.
- Propose a transparent fixed event surcharge shown upfront instead of opaque dynamic surge.
- Prioritize pre-scheduling since it converts the hardest part, unpredictable demand, into something manageable.
- Define success as reduced average wait time post-event and reduced surge-related complaint rate.
What a strong answer includes
- Addresses the demand-supply mismatch with supply-side interventions, not just pricing tweaks.
- Proposes converting unpredictable surge demand into predictable pre-booked demand via pre-scheduling before the event ends.
- Suggests transparent flat event pricing as a PR-friendlier alternative to opaque dynamic surge.
- Picks a complaint-rate guardrail alongside wait time, directly addressing the stated PR problem.
Common mistakes
- Proposing only pricing tweaks, like a bigger surge cap, without addressing the supply-side root cause.
- Ignoring the explicit PR and trust angle raised in the question.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you predict demand accurately enough to pre-position drivers?
- How would you handle events with highly unpredictable end times, like sports overtime?
More product design questions
- How would you improve the Uber app?Lyft · Product design · Easy
- Design an app for making someone a better cook.Lyft · Product design · Medium
- How would you design at ETA system for Lyft drivers?Lyft · Product design · Medium
- Design Lyft for kids.Google · Product design · Hard
- How would you design a bicycle renting app for tourists?Google · Product design · Medium
- Design a referral system for a grocery app.Google · Product design · Medium
More questions from these companies
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