Product design question
Explain some new Alexa Skillsets you would roll out and why.
- Amazon
- Product design
- Medium
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What this question tests
Tests platform ecosystem thinking: proposing new voice assistant capabilities grounded in real user needs and developer incentives.
How to approach it
- Identify underserved use cases for Alexa, such as proactive daily briefing personalization or better multi step task handling.
- Propose a specific skill, such as a proactive routine that adapts based on detected patterns, like adjusting a morning briefing based on calendar changes.
- Explain why this skill matters: it moves Alexa from reactive command response toward proactive, genuinely useful assistance.
- Address developer incentive, since third party skill quality depends on making Alexa's platform attractive for skill builders too.
- Define success: skill usage frequency and resulting device engagement, such as daily active Alexa interactions.
- State the assumption about whether the skillset is first party, built by Amazon, or aimed at encouraging third party developers.
What a strong answer includes
- Proposes a specific, well reasoned skill, an adaptive morning routine that adjusts briefing content based on calendar and weather changes, rather than a vague new skill category.
- Explains the strategic shift it represents, moving Alexa from reactive commands to proactive assistance, which is a stated direction voice assistants need to differentiate.
- Addresses the third party ecosystem, proposing better skill discovery and revenue sharing to attract higher quality developer built skills.
- Sets a measurable goal, for example a stated increase in daily proactive interactions per active Alexa device after rollout.
Common mistakes
- Proposing a generic new skill without explaining why it meaningfully improves on Alexa's current reactive command model.
- Ignoring the third party developer ecosystem, which is a major lever for skill quality and breadth beyond first party features.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you improve discovery so users actually find and use new skills?
- What would make a third party developer want to build for Alexa over a competing assistant?
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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