Practice a product critique and improvement interview case with a Spotify-style example covering product strengths, pain points, concrete UX changes, metrics, hypotheses, experiments, guardrails, prioritization, and business impact.
##### Question
Choose a product you admire but that still has clear shortcomings. Describe:
What the product does exceptionally well.
Its main pain points or gaps.
Concrete changes you would make and why they would move key metrics.
Overview: Practice a product critique and improvement interview case with a Spotify-style example covering product strengths, pain points, concrete UX changes, metrics, hypotheses, experiments, guardrails, prioritization, and business impact.
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Product Critique and Improvement Case
Choose a product you genuinely admire but that still has clear shortcomings. Give a structured critique focused on users, jobs to be done, metrics, trade-offs, and concrete improvements.
Constraints & Assumptions
Pick a product you know well enough to critique beyond personal preference.
Some versions of this prompt require a product that Google does not make, which rules out Google-owned products such as YouTube, Fitbit, Nest and Waze. Without that restriction, any product you admire is fair game.
Another version flips that rule: the product must be a Google product, and it has to be your favorite one. In that version you first make the case for why it is your favorite, then move on to the shortcomings and improvements.
Separate what the product does well from what it fails to solve for specific users.
Propose changes that are testable and measurable, not a wishlist of unrelated features.
Include guardrails so improvements do not damage reliability, trust, privacy, or the existing core experience.
Clarifying Questions to Ask Guidance
Should I choose a consumer product, enterprise product, marketplace, social app, or media product?
Should the critique emphasize UX, strategy, growth, monetization, trust, or retention?
Are you looking for one flagship improvement or several smaller improvements?
Should I include experiment design and sample-size reasoning?
Part 1 - Product Context and Strengths
Name the product, define its core job to be done, and explain what it does exceptionally well.
What This Part Should Cover Guidance
Target users, core use cases, and why the product earns repeat usage.
Product strengths tied to user value and business outcomes.
Metrics that likely reflect the strength, such as activation, retention, conversion, usage frequency, or satisfaction.
Part 2 - Pain Points and Gaps
Identify the main shortcomings for specific user segments or situations.
What This Part Should Cover Guidance
Clear segmentation of which users are affected and when.
Friction points in discovery, onboarding, search, collaboration, trust, performance, or workflow.
The business risk or missed opportunity behind each pain point.
Part 3 - Concrete Improvements
Propose two to four changes and explain how each addresses a gap.
What This Part Should Cover Guidance
The exact user flow change, expected outcome, and reason it should move a metric.
Primary metrics, secondary metrics, and guardrails for each idea.
Validation approach such as A/B tests, diary studies, usability tests, cohort analysis, or phased rollout.
Part 4 - Prioritization
Recommend which improvement to build first and why.
What This Part Should Cover Guidance
Reach, impact, confidence, effort, dependencies, and risk.
How to preserve the product's existing strengths while improving weak spots.
A learning plan if the first experiment is inconclusive.
What a Strong Answer Covers Guidance
Product analysis based on user needs and measurable outcomes.
Specific, testable improvements with trade-offs.
Guardrails that protect the current product experience.
A clear prioritization recommendation.
Follow-up Questions Guidance
What user segment benefits most from your first improvement?
What metric would convince you the idea failed?
What would you remove from the product?
How would you prevent over-personalization or clutter?