Design Questions

Question 1

What are four principals of good design?

Answer 1

• Innovative
• Useful
• Understandable
• Honest

Question 2

What is the method for new product ideation?

Answer 2

CIRCLES

1. Comprehend the situation
2. Identify the customer
3. Report the customers needs
4. Cut, through prioritization
5. List solutons
6. Evaluate tradeoffs
7. Summarize your recommendations

Question 3

What are clarifying questions for design interviews?

Answer 3

• What is it?
• Who is it for?
• Why do they need it?
• How does it work?

Question 4

How do you evaluate the customer

Answer 4

• Name
• Behaviors
• Demographics
• Needs & Goals

Question 5

Ways to list solutions?

Answer 5

Reversal method

Example: Buyers don’t have time to travel to the car dealership

Solution based on reversal: dealership should delver test drives to buyers home

Attribute method

List all product attributes then mix and match.

Question 6

Ways to think big

Answer 6

Avoid

Me too ideas: ideas of competitors

Integration ideas: integrate two existing solutions

Have at least three ideas

Question 7

How to approach product improvement questions

Answer 7

1. What is the goal of the product?
2. What problems does the product face?
3. How would you solve this problem?
4. How could you implement these solutions?
5. How would you validate your solution?

Question 8

How to approach favorite product?

Answer 8

1. What problems does the product solve for the user?
2. How does the product accomplish these goals? What makes it neat? What makes the user fall in love with this product?
3. How does it compare with alternatives?
4. How would you improve it?

Question 9

Talk through one online product

Answer 9

Beeminder

It’s for those trying to commit to an action to commit:

• losing weight
• being more productive
• excercising more

Competitors

Stikk.com

Question 10

Talk through one physical product

Answer 10

Remote control helicopter

Question 11

Talk through a product I purchased recently

Answer 11

Remote control helicopter

Question 12

What is my favorite product?

Answer 12

Drop box

Question 13

A product I think is well designed

Answer 13

Hype machine

Question 14

Gmail

Question 15

Google search

Question 16

Chrome

Answer 16

Ideas for improvement

Use-case - bookmark management

Bookmarks become very hard to manage over time. As many users add bookmarks they become hard to keep track of

Ideas

Search feature for bookmarks

Explore feature of bookmarks and previously explored sites

Question 17

What are key metrics to discuss with products?

Answer 17

Aquisition

Number of lazy registrations

Activation

Number of users that complete signup

Engagement

Profile completness

users that posted

posts

invites sent

Retention

1 day

7 day

30 day

Monetization

ARPU

ARPPU

ARPDAU

LTV

Conv Rate

Question 18

What are the general metrics questions you’d think about?

Question 19

Three tech products I like

Answer 19

Dropbox

Mint

OneNote

Question 20

Three ofline products I like

Answer 20

Helicopter (Syma S107)

Nest Smoke Alarm

Bacon wrapped mission hotdog

Question 21

Three products I don’t like

Answer 21

MozyHome - Personal Backup software

Slow, buggy, doesn’t work, same price as dropbox, don’t differentiate products well

MIT Blossoms

Doesn’t have a cuomster first midset. No marketing copy, doesn’t explain benefits.

Problems: doesn’t integrate conetnt with teachers curiculum creation timeframe

Google Finance

Question 22

Product design approach (2nd book)

Answer 22

Step 1: Ask questions to understand the problem

Step 2: Provide a structure

Step 3: Identify the users and customers

Step 4: What are the use cases? Why are they using this product? What are their goals?

Step 5: How well is the current product doing fo rtheir use cases? Are there obvious weak spots?

Step 6: What features or changes would improve those weak spots?

Step 7: Wrap things up