Phone Concept for Blind and Low-Vision Users: Segments, Features and Success Metrics
Company: Microsoft
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
You are a product manager asked to design a phone for people who are visually impaired. Choose the users you will design for, identify the everyday problems they have with phones today, propose and prioritize the features your phone would include, and explain how you would measure whether it succeeds.
```hint Vision loss is a spectrum
Someone blind from birth who is fluent with a screen reader, someone with low vision who still reads large print, and an older adult whose sight is fading have very different needs. Choose one group before you choose features.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- Should the phone serve people who are fully blind, people with low vision, or both?
- Does the brief require new hardware, or could software running on existing smartphones meet it?
- Are the target users already comfortable with technology and screen readers, or new to using a phone without sight?
- Will the phone be sold directly to consumers, or through carriers, health services or vision rehabilitation programs?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- A segmentation across the range of vision loss and of experience with assistive technology, with a reasoned choice of primary user.
- Why a dedicated phone is warranted, given the screen readers and magnifiers already built into mainstream smartphones.
- Pain points across the user's day (setup, calls and messages, reading, getting around, identifying things, getting help) mapped to hardware and software features and prioritized into a first version.
- Success metrics with guardrails, including the accuracy of anything the phone reads or describes aloud.
- Risks such as misreadings by AI features, camera privacy, cost, and stigma.
### Follow-up Questions
- The phone's camera reads a medication label and gets the dose wrong. How should the product be designed to reduce and contain that risk?
- If you could add only one physical button beyond power and volume, what would it do and why?
- How would you recruit users and run usability tests for this phone, and what would you measure in those sessions?
Overview: A product design interview exercise: design a phone for people with visual impairments. It tests segmenting users across the range of vision loss, justifying new hardware against built-in screen readers, prioritizing tactile, voice and camera features, and setting metrics and guardrails for accuracy and privacy.