Product design question
How would you improve Uber for a concert/festival?
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
Tests product design for a demand spike use case, requiring specific operational fixes rather than generic ride-hailing improvements.
How to approach it
- Clarify the core pain point: massive simultaneous demand at event end, causing surge pricing spikes and long wait times.
- Segment users into event attendees leaving together and drivers deciding whether the surge is worth navigating event traffic.
- Identify the operational problem: pickup zone congestion and driver hesitancy to enter high-traffic areas.
- Propose a pre-booking window before the event ends, letting riders reserve a pickup slot and location, smoothing the demand spike.
- Add a designated, clearly mapped pickup zone with staggered zones by rider group size to reduce congestion.
- Define success as reduced average wait time and surge multiplier at event end compared to baseline.
What a strong answer includes
- Targets the actual failure mode, a synchronized demand spike, rather than proposing generic app improvements.
- Proposes pre-booking as a demand-smoothing mechanism, directly addressing the spike instead of just reacting to it with pricing.
- Uses illustrative numbers as assumptions: assume 20,000 attendees requesting rides within a 30-minute window, requiring staggered pickup zones.
- Addresses the driver side explicitly, since driver hesitancy to enter event traffic is as much the problem as rider demand.
Common mistakes
- Proposing only pricing changes (surge) without addressing the physical congestion problem.
- Ignoring the driver's perspective and incentive to serve the area.
- Not proposing a concrete mechanism like pre-booking or zoning.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you incentivize drivers to be available right as the event ends?
- How do you handle a rider who misses their pre-booked slot?
- What's your fallback if pre-booking adoption is low?
More product design questions
- How would you improve the Uber app?Lyft · Product design · Easy
- Design an app for making someone a better cook.Lyft · Product design · Medium
- How would you design at ETA system for Lyft drivers?Lyft · Product design · Medium
- Design Lyft for kids.Google · Product design · Hard
- How would you design a bicycle renting app for tourists?Google · Product design · Medium
- Design a referral system for a grocery app.Google · Product design · Medium
More questions from these companies
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