Product design question
How would you improve iOS Reminders?
- Product design
- Easy
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What this question tests
Product design fundamentals: can you identify real user pain points in a simple, mature app and prioritize a fix over a laundry list of features.
How to approach it
- Define the core user: someone using Reminders for personal tasks, shared household lists, or location-based nudges.
- Identify pain points: reminders getting lost among too many lists, no smart prioritization, weak natural-language input.
- Pick one to solve, e.g. reminders that resurface based on context (location, calendar gaps) instead of a fixed time only.
- Explain why this beats alternatives like more list-organization features, which don't address forgetting to check the app.
- Sketch the solution briefly: proactive notification when context matches, with a snooze/defer option.
- Define success: percentage of reminders completed on time, or reduction in overdue reminders.
What a strong answer includes
- Picks a specific, unglamorous pain point (reminders piling up unactioned) instead of a generic 'add AI' answer.
- Ties the fix to a behavioral insight: people forget to open the app, so the fix must be proactive, not passive.
- Considers the cost: more proactive notifications risk annoyance, so proposes user control over frequency.
- Defines a measurable success metric tied to completion, not engagement/opens.
Common mistakes
- Suggesting a pile of unrelated features instead of picking one and going deep.
- Ignoring notification fatigue as a real cost of a 'smarter reminders' feature.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you decide the right notification frequency without annoying users?
- How would this integrate with Siri or Calendar without duplicating effort?
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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