Product Design: Laying Out a One-Room Home Shared by Three Occupants
Company: Google
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
Design a studio apartment that will be home to three people.
```hint Decide who the three people are
The same one-room layout works very differently for three roommates, a couple with a child, or a parent with two teenagers. Pick the household, then trace an ordinary day and look for the moments when all three need the same space at the same time.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- Who are the three occupants: unrelated roommates, a couple with a child, or some other household?
- Am I designing for a developer who will build and rent many such units, or for one household furnishing a unit it already lives in?
- Is the floor area fixed, and can I move walls and plumbing or use the ceiling height, or only change furniture and fittings?
- Which city or market is this in, given that rents and local housing rules decide what is allowed?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- A chosen customer and household, and why that choice was made
- The conflicts specific to three people sharing one room: sleep, privacy, the bathroom, storage, noise and working from home
- Concrete layout and furniture ideas mapped to those conflicts and prioritized by impact and cost
- How success is measured for the residents and for whoever builds or rents the unit
- Safety and building-rule constraints, budget, and how the design adapts as the household changes
### Follow-up Questions
- How would the design change if one of the three works night shifts?
- Which part of the design would you test first with real residents, and how?
- If the budget forced you to drop one feature, which would go, and why?
Overview: A product design interview exercise about laying out a single-room studio apartment that three people will share. It tests choosing the occupants and the paying customer, finding the conflicts of one-room living such as sleep, privacy, the bathroom and storage, prioritizing layout ideas, and measuring success within safety and building rules.