About critique design

If you are interviewing for a product manager position, then chances are very high that you will be asked these two infamous questions:

1- Tell me about a product you love and use frequently, why do you love it?

2- Tell me about a product that- in your opinion- was designed poorly, why do you think so?

Having the right mindset gives you undeniable leverage in handling the design questions.

So, here is my take on the subject…

Pre-requisite

Paramount to gauging a product design, one should establish first a list of criteria or a scorecard against which the product is to be evaluated. The best approach is to demonstrate to the recruiter/ interviewer how the chosen product scores against that list/ scorecard.

To that end, I suggest that you build your assessment scorecard based on the ten principles for good design established by Dieter Rams.

1- Innovative

2- Makes a product useful

3- Understandable

4- Aesthetic

5- Unobtrusive

6- Honest

7- Long-lasting

8- Thorough down to the last detail

9- Environmentally friendly

10- As little design as possible

How to structure your answer

My recommendation is that you choose up to two or three of the ten principles and evaluate the product design against these criteria. Once you have established your list, make sure to share it with your interviewer beforehand.

In order to avoid any potential misunderstanding regarding the feature/ product being assessed, make sure to walk your interviewer through it.

Now that the context is set for the interviewer, you can jump in and demonstrate how the product/ feature scores against your pre-established criteria.

Example

A loved product

One of my favorite products that I use on daily basis is “Waking up” a meditation app. The application offers two core features:

• Practice: where you are provided with many meditation practices and options, you can choose what works best for you and start your meditation journey. every meditation session is stored and shown on your dashboard.
• Theory: where you are provided with podcasts that are meditation-related.

Aside from its added value and content, what made “Waking up” my “to go to” meditation app can be sum up in three design key factors:

1- Makes a product useful: There is no denial of the product’s utility as it provides a guided meditation system that I rely on on daily basis for my personal growth.

2- Unobtrusive: The app is designed in a minimalistic manner that allows you space to perform your tasks- daily meditation for my case.

3- Understandable: the app is very user-friendly and fits perfectly with my pre-existing models. No cognitive effort is required to navigate the app.

• Poorly designed feature/product

The first thing that comes to mind when I think of a poorly designed feature is the LinkedIn skill assessment feature.

This feature allows the user (employee in this case) to take a quiz and earn a skill badge. you can access the feature by scrolling down your profile to the skills and endorsements section. Or, you be prompted to take a skill quiz.

Even though the skill badge can be useful for users — especially job seekers- as it allows them more visibility and maybe higher chances to get the attention of the recruiter. The insight and information the feature provides are not honest as answers can be found easily online. Hence, making it of little use to wary recruiters. Furthermore, when prompted to take a quiz, the skills suggested are never- at least for my case- accurate. Nevertheless, despite its drawbacks, the feature allows harnessing more data about users besides earning more engagement points for Linkedin's sake.

I personally believe that however great the value proposition your product offers, the design is a key factor for its success. As a product manager, being aware of the psychology involved in product design makes all the difference. So, by asking these questions, the recruiter is provided with a great deal of insight regarding your design savviness.

Ultimately, if you want to dive deeper into the subject, I highly recommend the holy grail of design books “ Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products” by Eyal Nir and “The Design of Everyday Things” by Don Norman for more in-depth psychological knowledge.

Stay savvy and prosper!