Accessible photo capture and sharing app for blind and low-vision users
Company: Microsoft
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
Design a photo-sharing app for people who are visually impaired. Explain who exactly you would build it for, which problems you would solve for them, what the first version would include, and how you would know it is working.
```hint Follow one photo
Trace a single photo from the moment someone wants to take it to the moment a friend responds, and at each step ask what a person who cannot rely on the screen would use instead.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- Should the product serve people who are fully blind, people with low vision, or both? Their tools differ: screen readers and voice versus magnification and high contrast.
- Is this a new standalone app or an accessibility layer inside an existing Microsoft product, and is the goal reach, engagement or mission impact?
- Who receives the photos: other users of this app, or friends and family on any messaging or social channel?
- May we use cloud image-description models, or must analysis of personal photos stay on the device?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- A deliberate segment choice that separates the needs of blind users, low-vision users and people who lost their sight later in life.
- Pain points across the whole flow: framing a shot, knowing what a photo shows, finding it later, sending it and hearing replies.
- Solutions that work with the phone's built-in screen reader rather than against it, ranked into a first release.
- Privacy and trust, including consent for recognizing faces and the cost of a wrong description.
- Success metrics with guardrails.
### Follow-up Questions
- The description model sometimes gets details wrong. How do you decide what it should say, and what it should never guess about the people in a photo?
- How would you make the photos your users receive from sighted friends accessible without asking those friends to install anything?
- Six months after launch, retention is strong among low-vision users but weak among blind users. What would you investigate first?
Overview: A product design question that asks a PM candidate to design a photo-sharing app for people with visual impairments. It tests choosing between blind and low-vision segments, mapping pain points from taking a photo to sharing it, accessible solution design, privacy judgment and success metrics.