Product design question
Which Google product don't you like and why? What would you do to improve it?
- Product design
- Easy
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
Whether you can critique a real product honestly and specifically, then propose a grounded fix, showing genuine product judgment rather than diplomatic vagueness.
How to approach it
- Pick one specific Google product you actually use, for example Google Assistant, rather than a vague 'Google Search has ads' complaint.
- State the specific problem: Assistant often mishears context-dependent follow-up questions in a multi-turn conversation.
- Explain the user impact: users stop trying multi-turn conversations and revert to single, simple commands, undermining the product's intended value.
- Prioritize context retention over adding new skills or integrations, since it's the root cause blocking deeper usage.
- Propose a fix: improve short-term conversational memory so follow-up questions correctly reference the prior turn's subject without re-stating it.
- Define success as an increase in multi-turn conversation length and reduced repeated or rephrased queries.
What a strong answer includes
- Picks a real, specific product flaw with a concrete example rather than a generic or diplomatic complaint.
- Explains the downstream user behavior change, reverting to simple commands, which shows the impact is understood, not just the symptom.
- Ties the fix to a measurable metric, conversation length, that would prove the fix worked.
Common mistakes
- Being too diplomatic and avoiding a real critique, which fails to show genuine product judgment.
- Naming a flaw without connecting it to a specific user behavior or measurable consequence.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you prioritize this fix against other Assistant improvements?
- How would you test whether the fix actually improved the experience?
More product design questions
- Design a TV for a car.Google · Product design · Hard
- Design a refrigerator for the blind.Google · Product design · Hard
- How do you design a camera for the elderly?Google · Product design · Medium
- Redesign Twitter for eCommerce.Shopify · Product design · Hard
- How would you go about designing a new location sharing app for Google?Google · Product design · Medium
- How would you improve Google Home?Google · Product design · Easy
More questions from Google
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