Product design question
Design a parking lot.
- Microsoft
- Product design
- Easy
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What this question tests
Foundational product design skill: scoping a physical-space system with users, constraints, and core flows.
How to approach it
- Clarify the context: a standalone parking lot versus a garage, and who manages it, e.g. a city or private operator.
- Identify users: drivers looking for a spot, and lot operators managing capacity and payment.
- Design the core flow: entry, spot-finding (signage or app-based), payment, and exit.
- Consider constraints like limited entrances/exits, peak-hour congestion, and accessible parking requirements.
- Define success as average time to find a spot and lot utilization rate.
What a strong answer includes
- Distinguishes needs of drivers versus lot operators rather than treating this as a single-user design.
- Proposes a concrete mechanism, like sensor-based spot indicators, to cut search time.
- Addresses accessibility requirements explicitly as a real constraint, not an afterthought.
- Uses an assumed metric, e.g. reducing average search time from 5 minutes to 2.
Common mistakes
- Designing only for drivers and ignoring the operator's revenue and management needs.
- Skipping accessibility and safety requirements entirely.
- Treating the problem as trivial with no discussion of constraints or metrics.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you handle peak-hour congestion at the entrance?
- How would you price parking to manage demand?
- How would you measure whether the design actually reduces search time?
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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