Product design question
Design an onboarding flow for a first-time ChatGPT user who has never used an AI chatbot.
- OpenAI
- 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
Basic product design fundamentals: reducing first-time friction and building initial trust for a genuinely new interaction pattern.
How to approach it
- Clarify the user: someone with zero mental model for talking to an AI, likely to either type something trivial or feel unsure what is allowed.
- State the pain point: a blank chat box is intimidating and gives no hint of what ChatGPT can actually do.
- Propose the flow: a short set of example prompts tailored to common needs, like writing help or answering questions, shown as clickable starters.
- Design the first response to demonstrate range quickly, and follow with a lightweight nudge to try a second, different type of request.
- Define success: percentage of new users who send a second message within the first session, since that signals the value clicked.
What a strong answer includes
- Leads with example prompts rather than a blank box, directly addressing the blank-page problem for someone with no mental model.
- Proposes showing range early, for example one example prompt each for writing, explaining, and brainstorming, to avoid users assuming it is a narrow tool.
- Names a specific success metric, like second-message rate within the first session, rather than a vague satisfaction goal.
- Keeps the onboarding lightweight, avoiding a long tutorial that delays the first real interaction.
Common mistakes
- Designing a long multi-step tutorial before the user gets to try the product at all.
- Assuming the user already understands what a chatbot is capable of.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you handle a user whose first message is something the model cannot do well?
- How would onboarding differ for a user coming from a marketing campaign versus organic search?
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More questions from OpenAI
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