Microsoft product critique: defend a personal pick and propose a prioritized upgrade
Company: Microsoft
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
In a product sense interview at Microsoft, you are asked to name the Microsoft product you like best, explain what makes it good, and then describe how you would improve it if you were its product manager. The choice of product is yours and is part of the answer.
```hint Earn the pick first
Before improving anything, be able to say who the product serves and which specific design choices make it work for them. A good improvement builds on those strengths instead of ignoring them.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- Can I choose any Microsoft product, consumer or business (for example an Office app, Windows, Xbox, Teams, LinkedIn or GitHub), or should I stay within one product family?
- Should the improvement serve a goal Microsoft cares about, such as engagement, subscription retention or winning against a specific rival, or may I set the goal?
- Is a new feature expected, or can the improvement be a change to an existing flow?
- Should I treat today's version of the product, including its recent AI features, as the baseline?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- A product the candidate genuinely knows, with a crisp account of who it serves and what it does better than alternatives.
- A goal for the improvement tied to Microsoft's interests, and one chosen user segment with specific, believable pain points.
- Several solution ideas compared, with one chosen and described concretely enough to build.
- Success metrics with guardrails, plus the main risks and how they would be handled.
- Awareness of what the product already offers, so the proposal is not something that ships today.
### Follow-up Questions
- A competitor ships the same improvement next quarter. Does that change your plan?
- How would you confirm the pain point is real before building anything?
- What would you remove or simplify in the product to make room for your improvement?
Overview: A classic product sense opener: name the Microsoft product you like best, explain who it serves and why it works, then propose an improvement as its product manager. It tests product knowledge, choosing a user segment and pain point, prioritizing solutions, and defining success metrics and risks.