Product design question
Design a note taking app for the elderly.
- Product design
- Medium
Practice this question out loud. An AI interviewer asks it, follows up like a real interviewer would, and scores your answer. Type or speak.
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What this question tests
Tests designing for an accessibility-conscious segment, low vision and reduced dexterity, rather than a generic note app.
How to approach it
- Identify pain points: small text and UI targets are hard to use, nested folders confuse, and typing is often harder than speaking.
- Segment tech-cautious elderly wanting reminders and appointments from more tech-comfortable elderly wanting general notes.
- Design a large-font, high-contrast UI with voice-to-text as the primary input method and a flat, non-nested category structure like Health, Family, To-Do.
- Add optional family member co-access for shared reminders.
- Define success as notes created per week, voice-input usage rate, and reminder completion rate.
What a strong answer includes
- Grounds design choices in known elderly-accessibility research, low vision, reduced dexterity, preference for voice.
- Addresses input method directly, since typing is still hard even with a larger button, not just font size.
- Adds a caregiver-visibility angle as a differentiated feature beyond a standard note app.
Common mistakes
- Just making the UI bigger without addressing input method, which typing alone doesn't fix.
- Ignoring family and caregiver context entirely.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you balance simplicity with power users who want more organization?
- How would you handle privacy if family members can see notes?
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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