Product Design: Indoor Wayfinding for Large Multi-Floor Buildings
Company: Amazon
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
Design a digital map product that helps people find their way around the inside of a building. Decide which buildings and which people you would build it for, what problems it should solve for them, what the first version includes, and how you would know it is working.
```hint Indoors, the hard parts change
Phones lose reliable GPS inside buildings, floors stack on top of each other, and the building's owner controls the floor plans. Choose whose trip you are improving first, then ask how much location precision that person really needs.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- Which kind of building is this for: offices, hospitals, airports, shopping malls or university campuses? Is it a single building or a campus of connected buildings?
- Will people use it on their own phones through an app or a web link, on screens mounted inside the building, or both?
- Who is the customer: a building owner publishing a map of its own property, or a consumer map product adding indoor maps for many buildings?
- Does the first version need to show each person's live position inside the building, or would a searchable map with step-by-step directions be enough?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- A reasoned choice of building type and user segment, contrasting occasional visitors with daily occupants and staff.
- Pain points specific to finding a destination indoors (floors, wings, entrances, accessible routes, signage) mapped to features.
- A realistic plan for positioning without GPS and for creating and maintaining map data, including its cost to the building operator.
- A prioritized first version that serves both the people navigating and the operator who pays for and maintains the map.
- Success metrics with guardrails, and risks such as wrong-floor errors, location privacy and exposing sensitive areas of the floor plan.
### Follow-up Questions
- The building has no beacons or other positioning hardware, and the operator will not pay to install any. How does your first version still guide people?
- How would you keep the map correct when rooms are renamed, corridors close for construction or departments move?
- Should the product play any role in a fire evacuation, and what would have to be true before you allowed that?
Overview: A product design question asking how to build a digital map that guides people around the inside of a building. It tests choosing a building type and user segment, handling indoor positioning without GPS and keeping map data current, prioritizing a first version for visitors and building operators, and defining success metrics and risks.
