Product design question
How would you improve the Starbucks app?
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
Product design for a mature app: can you identify a real friction point in a well-known experience (mobile order and pay) rather than proposing cosmetic changes.
How to approach it
- Define the core user job: order ahead to skip the in-store line and get a drink quickly and correctly.
- Identify the pain point: pickup chaos, crowded counters where mobile orders and in-line orders mix, making it hard to know when your drink is ready.
- Propose a fix: a dedicated mobile-order pickup shelf with a clear status indicator (preparing, ready) visible from the app and in-store.
- Consider personalization: smarter reordering of favorite/usual drinks to reduce ordering friction for repeat customers.
- Address timing: dynamic prep-time estimates based on real-time store queue load, not a static estimate that's often wrong.
- Define success: reduced average wait-past-estimate time and increased mobile order repeat usage.
What a strong answer includes
- Targets the well-known real-world pain point, chaotic pickup counters, rather than a generic 'improve the menu' answer.
- Proposes a concrete operational-plus-app fix (dedicated shelf, live status) that addresses both the physical and digital experience.
- Adds dynamic, real-time prep estimates instead of static ones, addressing why current estimates often feel unreliable.
- Chooses a specific, measurable metric, wait-time accuracy, tied directly to the identified pain point.
Common mistakes
- Proposing new drink/menu features instead of addressing the actual operational pain point in the ordering experience.
- Ignoring that this is a physical-plus-digital experience, and only proposing an app-only fix.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you get store staff to adopt a new pickup process without disrupting operations?
- How would you handle inaccurate prep-time estimates during a rush?
More product design questions
- How would you improve Twitter?PayPal · Product design · Easy
- How can Google help improve the grocery shopping experience of users?PayPal · Product design · Easy
- How would you improve Uber?PayPal · Product design · Easy
- What is your favorite product? Why?PayPal · Product design · Easy
- How would you improve Venmo?PayPal · Product design · Easy
- How would you design a colony on mars.PayPal · Product design · Hard
More questions from these companies
- PayPal PM interview questions
- Google PM interview questions
- Instacart PM interview questions
- Meta PM interview questions
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