Private Photo App for Extended Families, Accessible to a Visually Impaired Relative

You are asked to design a photo-sharing app built for an entire family, so that relatives can share pictures with one another. After you present your design, the interviewer adds a twist: one member of the family is vision impaired. ### Clarifying Questions - Does "family" mean one household, or an extended family spread across several homes, generations and possibly countries? - Is the main job sharing everyday moments as they happen, building a lasting family archive, or both? - Is this a standalone app, or part of an existing Microsoft product a family might already use for photos and accounts? ### Part 1 — Design the family photo-sharing app Decide whom in the family you are designing for, what problems the app solves that group chats and social networks do not, what the first version contains and how you would measure success. ```hint Why not a group chat Families already swap photos in messaging threads and on social networks. Look for what breaks there specifically for families: differences between generations, the people who take photos versus those who mostly look at them, and privacy for children. ``` #### What This Part Should Cover - Family members' roles and segments, with a justified focus - Pain points that general-purpose sharing tools leave unsolved - A prioritized first version, with trade-offs - Success metrics and privacy guardrails ### Part 2 — Adapt the app for a vision-impaired family member One relative has a visual impairment. How would you change the design so this person can take part fully, both enjoying the family's photos and sharing their own? ```hint Most of a photo's value is its story Consider what someone who cannot see the picture still wants to learn from it, and who in the family is best placed to tell them. ``` #### Clarifying Questions for this Part - Is the relative blind and using a screen reader, or do they have low vision and rely on magnification and high contrast? - Did they lose their sight recently, perhaps later in life, or are they long-time, confident users of assistive technology? #### What This Part Should Cover - How the relative experiences a photo they cannot see, including who is in it and why it matters - Navigation, reactions and sharing that work with assistive technology - What the rest of the family has to do differently, and whether the changes help everyone - Accuracy, privacy and dignity risks of automated image descriptions ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A coherent product built around how families actually share, not a general social network with a family label - Treatment of the vision-impaired relative as a full participant from the start, not an add-on - Metrics that show engagement across generations and households, including the vision-impaired relative's - Privacy for children's photos and for sensitive data such as face recognition ### Follow-up Questions - Automatic descriptions sometimes name the wrong person or invent details. How would you decide when to show them, and how would the family correct them? - How would you get grandparents who rarely install new apps to take part at all? - Should accessibility features be a separate mode or part of the default experience for everyone? Why?