Product design question
How will you go about designing a music app for the blind?
- Product design
- Hard
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What this question tests
Accessible product design for an audio-first product, focused on non-visual navigation and discovery.
How to approach it
- Identify the user: blind or low vision listeners who rely entirely on screen readers or voice for navigation, unlike sighted users browsing visual album art and playlists.
- Name pain points: visual-heavy browsing (album covers, scrolling playlists) is inaccessible, and finding new music relies on discovery UI that assumes sight.
- Design the core interaction as voice-first: voice search and voice commands for playback control, plus a well structured screen reader hierarchy for any visual elements that remain.
- Design discovery: audio previews and spoken descriptions of recommendations (artist, mood, genre) instead of relying on visual thumbnails or cover art to convey identity.
- Prioritize screen reader compatibility and voice control first, since these are foundational, not enhancement, for this user to use the app at all.
- Define success as task completion rate (finding and playing a specific song or genre) via screen reader, compared against a sighted user baseline.
What a strong answer includes
- Treats accessibility as the primary design constraint, not an add-on layer applied after a visual-first design.
- Proposes spoken descriptions for discovery, replacing visual cues like album art with genuinely equivalent audio information, not just alt text.
- Benchmarks task completion against a sighted user baseline, giving a concrete way to know if parity has actually been reached.
Common mistakes
- Designing the app visually first and retrofitting screen reader support afterward.
- Assuming voice control alone solves accessibility without addressing screen reader compatibility for any visual UI that remains.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you test this with real blind users before launch?
- How would you handle music discovery differently for this user versus a sighted user?
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
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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