Product design question
Design an application to enable citizens capture and access their medical information.
- Microsoft
- Product design
- Medium
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What this question tests
Whether the candidate can design a sensitive health data product with trust, interoperability, and accessibility as core constraints.
How to approach it
- Define the user: everyday citizens managing their own records, likely skewing toward those with chronic conditions or frequent provider visits.
- Name pain points: records scattered across providers, difficulty accessing history during an emergency, and low trust in sharing health data digitally.
- Prioritize a single source of truth: a personal health record that aggregates data from providers via standard interoperability protocols, with the citizen controlling sharing permissions.
- Propose a core flow: secure sign-in, provider-linked record import, and a simple emergency-access mode (QR code or PIN) for first responders.
- Define success as percent of users with a complete, up-to-date record and reduction in duplicate tests or delayed diagnoses due to missing history.
What a strong answer includes
- Grounds interoperability in real standards (like FHIR-based data exchange) rather than assuming providers will manually enter data.
- Puts the citizen in control of sharing permissions, directly addressing the trust barrier that blocks adoption of health data products.
- Names an emergency-access mode as a concrete, high-value feature distinct from routine record viewing.
Common mistakes
- Ignoring interoperability with existing provider systems and assuming a blank-slate data entry model.
- Underestimating the trust and consent barrier for sensitive medical data.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you handle citizens without smartphones or reliable internet access?
- What would you do if providers are slow to adopt the interoperability standard?
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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