Improve an Everyday Object of Your Choice: Key Attributes, Users and Redesign
Company: Google
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
In a product sense interview, you are asked to choose any physical object within reach and treat it as a product you own. Name the object and the people who use it, explain which of its attributes matter most and why, and then propose how you would improve it.
```hint Rank attributes for one user
Pick something you use often enough to describe its users concretely. Which attributes matter, and in what order, depends on who is using the object and for what, so settle on one group before you redesign anything.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- Does "improve" mean a better experience for the people who use the object, more sales for the company that makes it, or both?
- May the improvement change the materials, the price or how the object is made, or should it stay roughly the same product with changes added on top?
- Should I improve the object for the people who already use it, or redesign it to win over people who avoid it today?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- A quick, reasoned choice of object, with its purpose and the main groups who use it.
- Attributes of the object ranked for one chosen user group, with the reason for the order and how well the object performs on each today.
- Pain points traced to the weakest high-ranked attributes, and improvements prioritized by impact and cost, including what is deliberately left out.
- The trade-offs the improvement creates between attributes such as cost, size and simplicity, and how they are handled.
- Success metrics and guardrails that would show the improvement worked for the chosen users.
### Follow-up Questions
- Your improvement raises the cost of making the object. How would you find out whether buyers will pay for it?
- Which attribute of this object would you refuse to compromise, even if dropping it made the product much cheaper?
- How would you test the improvement with real users before committing to manufacture it?
Overview: A product sense exercise in which the candidate picks a physical object within reach, describes who uses it, ranks the attributes that matter most to one user group and proposes an improvement. It tests segmentation, structured prioritization, trade-off reasoning and choosing metrics that show the redesign worked.