Product design question
How would you design a supermarket for the elderly?
- Product design
- Medium
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What this question tests
Product design for an underserved segment with distinct physical and cognitive needs, checking for genuine empathy over generic accessibility talk.
How to approach it
- Clarify scope, whether this is a physical store redesign, a shopping app, or both, and confirm the target sub-segment, since needs vary by mobility and vision level.
- List pain points: small text on labels and shelves, long walking distances, difficulty reaching high or low shelves, and complex self-checkout technology.
- Segment by need, for example mobility-limited shoppers needing shorter routes versus low-vision shoppers needing larger text and audio assistance.
- Propose the design: larger, high-contrast signage, optimized shortest-path navigation assistance via an app, and staff-assisted or simplified checkout options.
- Prioritize navigation and wayfinding first, since physical fatigue and disorientation are often the sharpest barriers to a comfortable shopping trip for elderly customers.
- Define success as completed shopping trip rate without assistance requests and customer-reported ease of navigation, confirming whether digital or physical scope is prioritized.
What a strong answer includes
- Segments elderly shoppers by specific need, mobility versus vision versus cognitive load, rather than treating them as one uniform group.
- Proposes a concrete navigation mechanism, an app-guided shortest path to a shopping list's items, addressing physical fatigue directly.
- Balances physical store changes, like signage, with digital assistance, showing a holistic view of the experience.
- Sets a measurable success metric, reduced staff-assistance requests, which indicates increased independence and comfort.
Common mistakes
- Treating elderly shoppers as a single undifferentiated group with one generic fix.
- Focusing only on digital solutions and ignoring physical store layout and signage.
- Not defining any measurable indicator of improved experience.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you validate this design with actual elderly shoppers before rollout?
- What would you prioritize if you could only change one thing in the store?
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