Product design question
Design a cell phone for children.
- Microsoft
- Product design
- Medium
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What this question tests
Product sense balancing child safety, parental control, and a limited feature set appropriate to age.
How to approach it
- Clarify age range, for example 6 to 10, since needs differ sharply from teens who need a near full smartphone.
- List core needs: calling and texting a small approved contact list, location sharing with parents, no open internet or app store.
- Identify the parent as the real buyer and primary configurer of the device.
- Prioritize safety and simplicity over features, given the age group.
- Propose a locked down device: parent managed contact list, SOS button, GPS location sharing, and no social media or browser.
- Define success as parent adoption and retention, and reduced parent anxiety measured via a would you recommend survey.
What a strong answer includes
- Anchors on a specific age band instead of children broadly.
- Names the parent, not the child, as the decision maker and designs the setup flow for them.
- Gives an illustrative number, for example assuming 60 percent of parents cite no internet access as their top requirement.
- Weighs a hardware trade off, like a smaller battery for a smaller form factor versus talk time needs.
Common mistakes
- Designing a scaled down smartphone instead of rethinking the feature set for the age group.
- Ignoring the parent's setup and monitoring experience, which is where most of the decision value lives.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would this device evolve as the child gets older?
- How would you price it given Microsoft doesn't sell consumer phones today?
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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