Product design question

How would you design a security badge system for Google buildings?

Practice this question out loud. An AI interviewer asks it, follows up like a real interviewer would, and scores your answer. Type or speak.

What this question tests

Whether you can design a security system balancing strong access control against everyday employee friction.

Clarify scope: physical badge access to Google buildings, covering both entry security and visitor management.
Identify user segments: full-time employees needing fast, frictionless daily access, and visitors or contractors needing temporary, limited access.
Surface the core tension: stronger security checks add friction, and too much friction leads to tailgating or propped doors.
Prioritize a frictionless flow for employees, such as phone-based tap access, to reduce the temptation to bypass badges.
Address visitor and contractor access separately, with time-limited, host-approved digital passes rather than physical badges.
Define success metrics: tailgating incident rate and access time per employee, with a guardrail on failed or delayed entries during peak hours.

Names tailgating as the real security failure mode that friction actually causes, not just theoretical badge misuse.
Separates employee and visitor flows, since they need very different levels of access and expiration.
Proposes phone-based tap access as a concrete way to reduce friction without weakening security.
Gives a guardrail metric, entry time during peak hours, since a secure but slow system pushes people toward workarounds.

Designing purely for maximum security without considering that friction causes employees to prop doors or tailgate.
Treating visitor and employee access as the same problem instead of designing separate, appropriately scoped flows.

Chapters of the AI PM course that teach what this question tests.