Product design question

Design a smart home for the blind

Practice this question out loud. An AI interviewer asks it, follows up like a real interviewer would, and scores your answer. Type or speak.

What this question tests

Product design for accessibility in a physical, connected environment, requiring specific sensory substitution thinking.

Define the user: blind or low vision individuals living independently who want a smart home to increase safety and autonomy.
List pain points: visual interfaces like touchscreens and app-based controls are inaccessible without screen reader support.
Prioritize voice as the primary interaction mode, since it removes the visual dependency entirely.
Design safety features: audio alerts for open doors, smoke detection, and spoken descriptions of who is at the door via a smart doorbell.
Ensure every smart home action has a non-visual confirmation, like a spoken or haptic response, not just a status light.
Define success as reduced reliance on sighted assistance for daily home tasks and safety incident reduction.

Centers voice interaction as the primary mode rather than treating it as an add-on to a visual app.
Names a specific safety use case, a smart doorbell describing who's outside audibly, addressing a real blind user pain point.
Insists every action has a non-visual confirmation, avoiding a common accessibility gap of status lights with no audio equivalent.
Picks a meaningful outcome metric, reduced reliance on sighted help, rather than generic feature usage.

Designing a standard visual smart home app and adding accessibility as an afterthought.
Ignoring safety-critical alerts, which matter more for this user group than convenience features.

Chapters of the AI PM course that teach what this question tests.