Product design question
Design a digital library for kids below 5 years.
- Microsoft
- Product design
- Medium
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What this question tests
Tests product design for a pre-literate user segment where the parent is the actual controller and decision-maker.
How to approach it
- Design around the dual-user model: the child consumes, but the parent selects content and controls screen time.
- Identify pain points: parents worry about screen time and content quality, and kids under 5 can't navigate text menus.
- Propose audio-narrated picture books with tap-to-interact illustrations that don't require reading, plus a parent dashboard for time limits and curated collections.
- Add offline downloads for travel and no discovery feed designed to maximize session length.
- Define success as books completed per session, adherence to parent-set time limits, and weekly repeat usage.
What a strong answer includes
- Explicitly designs around the two-user reality, child interacts, parent controls, rather than treating this like a normal consumer app.
- Picks retention and completion over raw engagement time, addressing the screen-time-guilt concern directly.
- Avoids assuming pre-literate kids can navigate a normal text-based menu.
Common mistakes
- Designing a feed or discovery-heavy app that maximizes screen time, ignoring parental overuse concerns.
- Assuming kids under 5 can read menus or navigate like older users.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you balance parental screen-time concerns against engagement metrics?
- How would you curate age-appropriate content at scale?
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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