Product design question
Design a software application that helps people make intelligent financial decisions.
- Product design
- Easy
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
Structured product sense on an open-ended 0-to-1 problem, especially the ability to pick a specific user segment instead of solving for everyone.
How to approach it
- Ask whether to focus on daily spending, saving, or investing decisions, since 'financial decisions' spans all three.
- Pick one segment, for example young professionals with irregular income and little savings.
- Map their top pain points: no visibility into where money goes, and anxiety about starting to invest.
- Propose 2 to 3 features, such as auto-categorized spending, a savings goal tracker, and low-risk investment suggestions.
- Prioritize the spending-visibility feature first since it needs no new financial commitment from the user.
- Define a success metric, such as percent of users who increase their savings rate within 90 days.
What a strong answer includes
- Names a specific segment (e.g. gig workers with variable income) rather than 'everyone with money'.
- Ties each feature to a stated pain point instead of listing generic finance app features.
- Gives an illustrative baseline, e.g. assumes only 30% of the segment currently tracks spending at all.
- Separates the north star metric (savings rate change) from adoption metrics (weekly active budgeting sessions).
Common mistakes
- Trying to solve budgeting, investing and credit all at once instead of scoping down.
- Jumping straight to features before naming the user and their core pain point.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you convince a skeptical user to link their bank account?
- What would you cut if you had to ship an MVP in 6 weeks?
More product design questions
- Design a TV for a car.Google · Product design · Hard
- Design a refrigerator for the blind.Google · Product design · Hard
- How do you design a camera for the elderly?Google · Product design · Medium
- Redesign Twitter for eCommerce.Shopify · Product design · Hard
- How would you go about designing a new location sharing app for Google?Google · Product design · Medium
- How would you improve Google Home?Google · Product design · Easy
More questions from Google
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