Product design question
You are a new PM at Google. Design a wearable for children.
- Product design
- Hard
Practice this question out loud. An AI interviewer asks it, follows up like a real interviewer would, and scores your answer. Type or speak.
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What this question tests
Tests product design for a highly regulated, safety-sensitive segment where the parent is the real decision-maker and buyer.
How to approach it
- Design around the dual-user model: the child wears and uses it, the parent buys, configures and monitors it.
- Identify pain points: parents want location safety and limited communication without full smartphone and social media exposure at a young age.
- Propose a wearable with GPS location sharing, an SOS button, and voice or preset-message calling limited to an approved contact list, no open internet or app store.
- Address the real regulatory constraint directly: COPPA compliance and minimal data collection, given Google's past scrutiny in kids' products.
- Define success as parent-reported peace of mind via survey, daily location-check usage, and low support-ticket volume around privacy concerns.
What a strong answer includes
- Explicitly designs around the two-user reality, child wears it, parent controls it, rather than treating this like a normal consumer wearable.
- Names COPPA and Google's real regulatory history as a design constraint, not an afterthought.
- Deliberately limits scope, no open internet or app store, correctly reading the safety-first intent of this product.
Common mistakes
- Designing a smartwatch with open internet or social features that ignores the safety-first intent of this product.
- Not addressing COPPA or data-privacy compliance at all, a serious gap for a kids' product at Google.
Likely follow-up questions
- How would you handle the data-privacy requirements for a product marketed to children?
- What age range would you target, and how would that change the feature set?
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