Product design question
How would you design an automated car?
- Microsoft
- Product design
- Medium
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What this question tests
Tests product design for a safety-critical, trust-sensitive product, requiring the candidate to prioritize trust-building and edge-case handling over feature listing.
How to approach it
- Clarify scope: the in-vehicle passenger experience, or the broader ecosystem including remote monitoring and edge-case handling, since a full AV product spans both.
- Segment users: first-time riders who need reassurance and trust-building, versus repeat riders who want efficiency and minimal friction.
- Identify the core design challenge: passengers have zero control and limited visibility into the car's decision-making, which creates anxiety, especially for first-time riders.
- Design for trust: a real-time, plain-language display showing what the car sees and why it's making each decision (like why it's stopped or slowing down).
- Design for edge cases: a clear, simple way to request human support or manually flag a problem during the ride, since passengers must never feel stuck with no recourse.
- Define success as trust survey scores among first-time riders and repeat ride rate, not just completed-trip count.
What a strong answer includes
- Prioritizes trust and transparency as the central design problem, correctly identifying it as the primary barrier to adoption for autonomous vehicles.
- Distinguishes first-time riders needing reassurance from repeat riders wanting efficiency, designing for both.
- Proposes a concrete mechanism, a plain-language explanation of the car's real-time decisions, rather than a vague make it feel safe answer.
- Addresses the critical edge case of in-ride support access, a genuine safety and trust requirement unique to this product.
Common mistakes
- Focusing only on the driving technology instead of the passenger-facing trust and communication experience.
- Ignoring the need for a human support fallback during a ride.
- Treating all riders as equally comfortable, missing the first-time-rider anxiety that's central to adoption.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you handle a passenger who wants the car to pull over unexpectedly?
- How would you build trust before a rider's very first trip?
- What's your plan for handling a system malfunction mid-ride?
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More questions from Microsoft
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