Product design question
How would you design a new mobile banking app?
- Product design
- Medium
Practice this question out loud. An AI interviewer asks it, follows up like a real interviewer would, and scores your answer. Type or speak.
Start a mock interview on this question · Mock interview from a job description
What this question tests
Tests product design fundamentals for a trust-heavy financial product: the user, the core need, and a prioritized MVP.
How to approach it
- Pick a user: someone new to a bank, likely a first-time account holder or a switcher from a legacy bank.
- Identify the pain: anxiety about not knowing their real-time balance and unexpected fees.
- Prioritize by trust impact: real-time balance and spending alerts first, before budgeting gamification.
- Design the core flow: instant balance view, transaction notifications, simple spend categorization.
- Address security explicitly: biometric login and instant card lock, since trust is the top adoption barrier.
- Define success as daily use of the balance and alert feature, plus fewer support calls about surprise charges.
What a strong answer includes
- Leads with trust and security features rather than flashy budgeting tools.
- Names a specific, plausible pain point, surprise fees, not a generic 'make banking easier.'
- Ties success to reduced anxiety, support call reduction, not just app opens.
Common mistakes
- Designing feature-heavy add-ons like investing before nailing core account trust and clarity.
- No mention of security or fraud protection.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you prioritize security investment versus feature investment?
- How would this differ for an underbanked user versus an existing customer?
- What would you measure to catch fraud early?
More product design questions
- How would you improve Outlook for the use case when people get overwhelmed by number of emails received after returning from a vacation?Microsoft · Product design · Medium
- You’ve just joined Meta and have been tasked with launching a new product to help people at home during emergencies. What would you build?Meta · Product design · Medium
- How do you design a camera for the elderly?Google · Product design · Medium
- Design a new feature for Twitter that improves the new user’s experience.Twitter · Product design · Medium
- How would you go about designing a new location sharing app for Google?Google · Product design · Medium
- How do you design an app for on-demand beauty services?Product design · Medium
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