Product design question
Build a way to help people find a dog walker.
- Meta
- Product design
- Easy
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What this question tests
Product design for a two-sided marketplace: can you identify both sides' needs (owner and walker) and design trust mechanisms for a service with safety stakes.
How to approach it
- Define both sides: dog owners needing reliable, trustworthy walkers, and walkers wanting flexible, well-paying work.
- Identify the core pain point: trust, since a stranger is entering the owner's home and handling their pet.
- Propose trust mechanisms: background checks, verified reviews, GPS tracking during walks, and photo/video updates.
- Design the matching flow: filter by location, availability, and dog size/temperament compatibility.
- Address the walker side: fair, transparent pay and a rating system that isn't purely owner-biased.
- Define success: repeat booking rate (owner trust indicator) and walker retention.
What a strong answer includes
- Leads with trust and safety as the core design constraint, since that's the real barrier to adoption in a pet-care marketplace.
- Proposes concrete trust features: live GPS tracking and in-walk photo updates, not just star ratings.
- Balances both sides of the marketplace instead of only designing for the pet owner.
- Names repeat booking rate as the north-star metric, since it reflects real trust, not just first-time signups.
Common mistakes
- Designing only for the owner side and treating walker supply as a given.
- Underweighting safety/trust mechanisms, which are the actual adoption barrier for this category.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you handle a dispute, e.g. an owner claims the dog wasn't walked as promised?
- How would you bootstrap enough walker supply in a new city?
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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