Product sense: helping people with hearing loss experience and enjoy music
Company: Google
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
You are a product manager asked to design a product that lets deaf and hard-of-hearing people enjoy music. Nothing more is specified: decide what form the product takes, which people it is for, what it does, and how you would know it is working.
```hint Not one kind of listener
Hearing loss ranges from mild to profound, and music carries more than sound: rhythm, lyrics, emotion and a shared social moment. Ask which of those each group can already reach and which it cannot.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- Is this a physical device, software, or either, and should it work with products the company already makes, such as phones, watches or a streaming service?
- Does the target include people with partial hearing loss who use hearing aids or cochlear implants, or only people with little or no usable hearing?
- Is the aim reaching as many users as possible, building a business, or advancing an accessibility mission?
- Is the main setting listening alone, or shared moments such as concerts and parties?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- Segmentation by degree and type of hearing loss and by each group's relationship to music, ending in a reasoned choice of one group.
- Concrete ways to carry music through channels other than normal hearing, and what each channel can and cannot convey (beat, melody, lyrics, mood).
- Prioritization that weighs impact against effort and technical feasibility, including whether to start with hardware or software.
- Success metrics tied to real engagement with music, with guardrails.
- Risks such as a translation that feels like noise, designing without Deaf users, and framing the product as a cure.
### Follow-up Questions
- Bone-conduction headphones often come up for this problem. Which users would they help, and which would they not help at all?
- How would you test whether a vibration version of a song really conveys the music before building any hardware?
- How would the product change if the main use case were a live concert rather than personal listening?
Overview: A product sense prompt asking a product manager to design a way for deaf and hard-of-hearing people to enjoy music. It tests segmentation by type and degree of hearing loss, conveying music through channels other than sound, choosing between hardware and software, and defining success metrics and risks.