The AI Product Design Interview: Your Complete Guide

The latest product design case interview is a doozy. Here's your guide to conquering it.

The product design interview is traditionally one of PM’s toughest:

Design a pencil for the blind
Design a dating experience for Instagram

It’s like speed-running the entire PM process in a 30-45 minute case.

Today’s top companies have a new flavor of that interview: the AI product design interview. And not just any companies. Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, Figma Adobe… They’re all adapting this new interview type.

So if your skillset is still stuck in 2022, you’re in for a rude awakening come your next interview.

Today’s post is to keep you prepared.

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Today’s Post

I’ve put together the web’s first and deepest look into this new interview:

1. Mock interview

2. What they are evaluating

3. The companies asking and their real formats

4. Types of product design questions + 83-question bank

5. The 10-step interview framework to use

6. Anti-patterns that kill candidates

7. 3 worked examples

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1. The Mock Interview

To get you in the right mindset, let’s start with an example. I’ve recorded an end-to-end mock interview of what a good answer looks like for you.

This is a question OpenAI has been asking for years now:

Design an AI product that helps people communicate with their pets

Watch it and ask yourself: how can I perform closer to this?

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2. What They Are Evaluating

This interview didn’t exist 18 months ago, so rubrics are in flux. But high level, companies are looking to see that you:

1. Create and follow a structure

2. Are very user-centric

3. Come up with prioritized creative solutions

4. Demonstrate a depth in design

5. Have AI technical fluency

It translates to a rubric like this:

You generally need to get a passing or neutral score across all 5 categories!

How do you pass all 5?

The rest of the guide breaks it down for paid subscribers only. You’ll get:

• Guidance on how to adapt to different companies

• My 10-step framework with 3 worked examples

• 83 question practice bank