Create a smartphone for a 6-year-old.

Question

Create a smartphone for a 6-year-old.

Asked at Adobe over a year ago

3.8k views

Product Design category

ni2

Asked at

3.8k views

How to answer Product Design questions

Interview Guide

Top Product Design interview questions

How would you design a bicycle renting app for tourists?62 answers | 82.5k views
Build a product to buy and sell antiques.54 answers | 66.8k views
How would you design a web search engine for children below 14 years old?36 answers | 42.9k views
See Product Design PM Interview Questions

Invite members
Invite by email

Add another

yogesh247 · Answer 1 · 2019-12-11T21:41:33+0000

So, we want to create a smartphone for a 6-year-old. Here is how should we approach this problem:

1. Identify the users: One of the users has already been provided in the question itself, i.e. a 6-year-old. However, since the parents would be the purchasers of the product, so, they would also be considered as the users and customers of that smartphone. Further, the caretakers (nanny) will also be a user.

2. Identify the use cases: Why would a 6-year-old use a smartphone? Of course, not to make phone calls! The main use cases will be the following:

The kids would be using it to play games
The kids would be using it as an SOS button which will send an alert of their location on their parents' mobile in case they get lost
The nanny would be using it to call (audio/video) the parents when the child needs
The parents would be using it to record their lullabies so that the nannies or the kids themselves can easily play them when the parents are out
The parents would also be using it to track every movement of their kid using the smartphone
The parents would like to teach their kids through mobile technology

3. How well are the current products doing for these use cases? Well, currently, they are using different means for every use case. There are separate video games. The nannies call from their own phone, which is usually an audio call if they don't have access to the home wi-fi. A tape recorder is used to record the lullabies or they are being sung over the call only. Currently, there is no such device, which provides the facility of an SOS button for 6-year-olds. The parents do not want to give the actual phones to their kids for fear of distractions, wastage of money or any other reason.

Note that the games and education facilities are not the primary use cases and need not be addressed in the first phase of implementation.

4. What features will be there in the smartphone that will address these gaps? The new smartphone shall have the following features:

Physical specs:

It should have a string attached to it so that it does not fall off while the kid is playing.
Its size need not be as big as the original smartphone since it does not necessarily require a keypad.
There should be a screen with three buttons on one side. First one would instantaneously send the location of the child to their parents upon pressing; the second one would initiate a video call with the parents and the third one would have the functionality of recording the audio files or playing the recorded files.
The functions like geofencing could also be provided in it which will send an alert to the parents' phones if the kid goes out of a certain territory
The parents should be able to track every movement of their kid through the smartphone
The overall model should not be large and bulky and should be easy enough to be carried by a 6-year-old

Technical specs:

The storage space need not be large enough since we need only few lullabies to store
The battery should be at least big enough to provide GPS tracking for a period of an average kid's play time

ROHIT SINGH · Answer 2 · 2023-05-11T17:24:24+0000

Create a smartphone for a 6-year-old.

ME:-Before I start I want to clarify that what is the goal behind this.

Interviewer: what do you think?

I think that the goal of the product is to make it more user friendly and also let them stay away from nuisance materials.

User groups:-6 year old or below.

Pain points:-

1.Don’t know how to use.

2.Parents are concerned for Safety of their children.

3.Phone’s weight.

4.they are not good in writing text messages.

5.Addiction.

6..Sometime they reach to those things where they should not or his friend share something awkward. eg(nuisance sites,18+ content etc.)

Solution:-

1.As their parents will buy the phone so eventually they will teach how to operate.

2.We can use location feature which can only be turned off by their parent for this purpose we will provide some password and the location will be shared to their parents.

3.Phone should not be heavy for this purpose we can use some light weight material.

4.for this purpose we can use some voice assistant using AI/Ml which will provide them more satisfaction and relevant condition.

5.It could be also possible that they are using phone more than it is permissible.in this case we can send notification to their parents and also provide some automatic phone lock option.

6.For this purpose I would like to use some AI/ML model which can easily identify these kind of text,videos and audios and block them.

Anugrah Sharma · Answer 3 · 2019-12-17T03:11:24+0000

Where does this 6 years old kid live? Assuming America

Do you want me to create any launch strategy too for that? Not for now

I am going to design a phone for a 6-year-old American kid and the customer for this product would be his/her parents.

User Persona: Perhaps, this 6-year-old goes to kindergarten and one of the parents picks up the kid after school. I am assuming, the kid won't stay alone apart from school.

Use cases of the phone:

In case of emergency, shall be able to talk to parents
Parents shall be able to know the location of kid anytime
Kid shall be able to play games on that phone
The phone shall help the kid in learning faster

Prioritization :

I think 1 and 2 are must-haves for the phone and 3rd and 4th are good to have features.

Solution:

I would propose to make a wrist phone so that probability of kid losing the phone reduces and will have just one button and a loudspeaker. The kid shall be able to dial to his parents just by pressing that button.

Second, we shall make an app for the parents, using which they shall be able to track the location of the kid and dial to the kid which will be auto picked (no need for the kid to pick up the call)

Metrics: Since we are building two features here, I think we shall be tracking 2 different metrics for both of them. for the first feature, it will be the number of calls made and for the second feature, it will be daily sessions and DAU/MAU on the app.

Summary: We will be designing a single button wrist phone for the kid and a location tracking app for parents. the kid shall be able to call the parents using the wristwatch and vice versa.