The favorite product question

The favorite product question in a PM interview ("What's your favorite product and why?") tests whether you can explain why a product wins for a real person. It sounds like small talk before the interview starts. Treat it as a product question where you picked the ground yourself, which leaves you few excuses.

Why interviewers ask it, and what a weak answer sounds like

It needs no setup: no case, no data, no shared background. You choose the product, so you should know it better than anyone in the room. What an interviewer learns is what you notice when nobody tells you where to look, and whether you can get past your own taste to someone else's reasons. Then they can follow up on anything you say, for as long as they like.

Here's a weak answer:

"I love my running app. The interface is so clean and it's really easy to use. It has tons of features and I use it every day."

Swap in any other app and it reads the same. "Clean" and "easy" don't say for whom, or compared with what. "Features" is a list, and "I use it every day" describes a habit. The interviewer has learned that you feel good about running.

An answer can also fail by being too polished: the company's history and funding, told well, with no user anywhere in it.

How to choose a product you can defend

Choose by what you can still talk about after ten minutes of follow-ups. Before you settle on a product, try these on it:

• Who is this product bad for?

• What did you use before it, or what would you use without it?

• How does it make money, and what does it cost to make or run?

• What would you change first?

If you stall on two of them, pick another. Cracking the PM Interview warns about this too: affection for a product won't carry you if you have little to say about it.

You don't have to be the main user. Someone else's tool can work well if you've watched them use it, and my example below is a tool I admire for someone else's hands. Objects make good picks as well. There's no interface vocabulary to hide behind, so your reasoning shows.

To practice, take Favorite Products & Optimization, name your pick, answer the four questions above, then stop.

Start from the person and the moment

My example is the OXO Good Grips swivel peeler, because its origin is public and short. Sam Farber, who had sold his cookware company, saw his wife Betsey, an architect with arthritis in her hands, struggling with an old-fashioned metal peeler. He went to a New York design firm, Smart Design, and they talked with ordinary consumers, chefs and an arthritis group. The first Good Grips tools were shown at a trade show in San Francisco in 1990.

Don't open with that story. Open with the person at the moment the product matters, say what goes wrong there, then give the one design choice that fixes it.

"My pick is the OXO Good Grips peeler. Picture someone making dinner with sore hands. The carrot's wet, and an old metal peeler has a thin handle you have to squeeze hard so it doesn't slip. OXO made the handle big and oval, in a soft rubber that holds when wet, so the hand does less of the work. It started with one person's arthritis, and it suits anyone holding a wet carrot."

Look at what that left out: the blade, the swivel, the founder's name. All of that can come later if the interviewer asks. Mention only what matters at the moment you've described. A good test is whether a listener can picture the scene. If they can, every follow-up has something to attach to.

The same order works on a phone. A song is playing in a cafe, you want its name, and it may end soon. With Shazam you open the app and press one button, and it listens and names the song. The winning choice is that single button, with nothing to type or choose while the song is still playing.

For either question below, pick a product of your own, not the peeler or Shazam, and write two sentences, the person and the moment, before anything else. Then stop and read them back. If they'd fit any other product, start again.

What it gave up, and why the alternatives lose

A choice that wins one moment costs something somewhere else, and you should be able to say what. The peeler cost more than the standard peeler of its day. Its big handle takes up more of a drawer. OXO also set out to make kitchen tools for people of all ages and abilities, rather than a medical aid. My read is that a tool built only for severe arthritis could go further for those hands, and OXO gave that up to sell to everyone.

Then compare it with the alternatives, and go beyond other peelers to what people would do instead.

Say who should still buy the other thing. Someone with healthy hands who peels a potato twice a year is fine with the cheap metal peeler. An answer that admits this is easier for an interviewer to trust.

Shazam has its own price. Without an Apple Music subscription you get a short sample after a match, so it leaves most of the listening to other apps. My read is that it gave up being a place you stay, to be fast at one moment. Its rivals listen too. Google's search app identifies a song it hears, and since October 2020 it also takes a tune you hum or whistle. So "it listens" no longer sets Shazam apart, and an honest answer says so. What's left, on my read, is how quickly you reach the button while the song plays, a thin edge worth timing yourself before you claim it.

On Favorite-product prompt: defend the meal ordering app you rely on and improve it, write only the alternatives and where each one loses. Stop before the improvement.

"What would you change?"

Expect this next. Liking a product gives you no cover, and if you can't name a flaw, the interviewer may assume you haven't looked.

Stay with the same person and moment, and ask where they're still stuck or what happens later. For the peeler, I'd think about the day the blade goes dull and the whole tool goes in the bin. A replaceable blade is the obvious fix, so first check whether the company already tried it. OXO has sold a Pro version of the swivel peeler whose blade swaps out for a replacement cartridge, and that changes the answer:

"When the blade dulls, the whole peeler goes in the bin. OXO has already sold a version with replaceable blades, so before building anything I'd want to know how owners took to it. If few bought spare blades, people may prefer a fresh peeler to a spare part, and I'd look for a different problem."

That answer has a user, what the company already tried, and a question to settle before building, and it fits in three sentences. If the interviewer wants more, treat it as a full improvement prompt: who pays, which problem, what you'd test. Product improvement questions walks through that.

For either question below, use a product you rely on yourself. Name one flaw, check whether the company has already tried a fix, and write the one thing you'd want to know before fixing it. Don't propose the fix yet.

Build a small bench of products

Prepare a few products so the wording of the prompt can't catch you out. I'd want these five ready:

• The employer's product. Use it for a week before the interview, as a real user would, and note where you got stuck.

• Something you quit. Prompts about a product you dislike are easier when you already know what drove you away.

• A recent purchase. "What's the last thing you bought?" takes the same kind of answer, and a purchase comes with its own alternatives: the ones you left on the shelf.

• An app you opened this week. Your memory of it is fresh, including where it annoyed you.

• Something with no screen. Some prompts ask for this outright, and it's hard to invent an answer on the spot.

Give each one a card you can read in a minute. Mine has six lines, in this order:

1. Person and moment. One sentence I can picture.

2. Before this existed. What they did instead.

3. The winning choice. One design decision, with no list.

4. The price of that choice. What it gave up, and who should skip it.

5. The money. Who pays, for what, and what it costs to make or run.

6. First change. What I'd look at first, and what I'd want to know before building it.

Here's the peeler's card:

1. A cook with sore hands, a wet carrot, a weeknight.

2. A thin metal peeler, or a paring knife.

3. A big oval handle in soft, non-slip rubber.

4. It costs more and takes more drawer space. Someone who rarely peels can skip it.

5. A one-time sale, usually to the person who'll use it. Rubber and a steel blade, so little to run after the sale.

6. A dull blade means a new peeler. Find out how the replaceable-blade version sold.

Line 5 is the one I'd spend ten minutes on, because "how does this make money?" is an easy follow-up to ask. Say each card aloud a few times, in different words each time, so an interruption doesn't throw you.

Try Evaluate a product you like using only a card you wrote for your own pick.