Product design question
Design a feature for finding apartments on Facebook.
- Product design
- Medium
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What this question tests
Tests marketplace feature design within an existing platform: matching supply and demand for a high trust, high stakes transaction.
How to approach it
- Define both sides: renters searching for apartments and landlords or property managers listing units.
- Identify the core trust need: verifying listings are genuine and landlords are legitimate, since housing scams are common on open platforms.
- Propose the feature: a dedicated housing marketplace section with landlord verification and structured filters for price, location, and amenities.
- Address safety, requiring identity verification for landlords and a reporting mechanism for suspicious listings.
- Define success: verified listing volume and renter to landlord contact conversion rate.
- Confirm with the interviewer whether this builds on Facebook Marketplace directly or is a separate dedicated feature.
What a strong answer includes
- Addresses the real trust barrier directly, landlord identity verification and a scam reporting mechanism, since housing listings are a common target for fraud on open platforms.
- Proposes structured search filters, price, location, bedrooms, and amenities, since unstructured marketplace listings are poorly suited to serious apartment searching today.
- Leverages Facebook's existing social graph, allowing renters to see mutual connections or local group activity for added listing trust signals.
- Sets a measurable goal, for example a stated reduction in reported scam listings alongside increased renter to landlord contact conversion.
Common mistakes
- Ignoring the real fraud and trust risk that housing listings face on open, loosely moderated marketplaces.
- Proposing generic marketplace search improvements without structured filters specific to apartment hunting needs.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you verify a landlord is legitimate without adding too much friction to listing?
- What would you do if scam listings kept appearing despite verification?
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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