Product design question
Redesign an intercity bus stand for a Tier-2 city in your country.
- Product design
- Hard
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What this question tests
Product design for public infrastructure in a specific, resource-constrained context, checking whether you can adapt to the realities of a Tier-2 city rather than defaulting to a Western airport model.
How to approach it
- Define the user: daily and occasional intercity bus travelers in a Tier-2 city, many price-sensitive and some with limited literacy or smartphone access.
- Identify current pain points: unclear platform assignment, no real-time bus arrival information, unsafe or crowded waiting areas, and informal ticketing.
- Prioritize wayfinding and safety over aesthetic upgrades, since missed buses and safety concerns are the top complaints in this context.
- Propose a redesign: clear, multilingual platform signage with real-time arrival boards, a covered and lit waiting area, and a simple SMS-based ticketing and arrival alert system that doesn't require a smartphone app.
- Address affordability: keep any digital system optional and free to use via basic SMS, since Tier-2 populations may have limited data access.
- Define success as reduced missed-bus incidents, improved passenger safety reports, and adoption of the SMS alert system.
What a strong answer includes
- Grounds the redesign in Tier-2-specific constraints, low smartphone penetration and price sensitivity, rather than copying a first-world airport model.
- Prioritizes wayfinding and safety, the actual top complaints in under-resourced bus stands, over cosmetic renovation.
- Chooses SMS over an app-only solution, correctly matching the likely device and connectivity profile of the user base.
Common mistakes
- Designing a high-tech, app-dependent solution that ignores limited smartphone or data access in the target city.
- Focusing on aesthetics or amenities instead of the core wayfinding and safety problems travelers actually face.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you fund this redesign given limited municipal budgets?
- How would you measure success if you can't rely on app analytics?
More product design questions
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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