Product Design: An Alarm Clock That Works Without Relying on Sight

You are a product manager. Design an alarm clock for people who are blind. Decide what the product should achieve, choose its form and the users it is built for, propose and prioritize features, and explain how you would measure success. ```hint Go through a night without sight Walk through one evening and morning without looking at anything: setting the alarm, checking that it is set, being woken, snoozing and switching it off. Note each place where today's alarms depend on reading a display or finding an on-screen control. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Is the form open, or should this be a physical bedside clock, a phone app or a feature of an existing voice assistant? - Should it serve only people with no usable vision, or also people with low vision and the sighted people they live with? - Is the scope waking up in the morning only, or also reminders and timers during the day? - Is this a commercial product, an accessibility feature inside an existing product, or a project for an organization that serves blind people? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A goal for the product and a reasoned choice of form, or the criteria that decide it - Segments within blind and low-vision users, and anyone sharing the clock, compared, with one chosen and the reason - Pain points across setting, confirming, waking and dismissing, ranked by severity - Features compared on non-visual input and feedback, reliability and cost, with a prioritized first version - Success metrics with guardrails, plus risks such as an alarm that is set wrong or fails silently ### Follow-up Questions - How would you test the product with blind users before committing to hardware or a full build? - How would the design change for someone who is both blind and hard of hearing? - How would you make sure the alarm still sounds if the power or the network fails overnight?