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Design a refrigerator for offices.

Imagine you're a PM at a startup that makes refrigerators and the CEO asks you to explore this new market. You don't have any technical constraints.
Asked at Meta (Facebook)
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category Product Design category Product Sense companyMeta (Facebook) companygoogle
& 1 other company
category Product Design
category Product Sense
Asked at
companyMeta (Facebook),
companygoogle
& 1 other company
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Clarify the scope:

1.    What products are to be stored?  - Food, Medicine, beverages, Ice creams? Drinks :P 

2.    Will the Refrigerator be a common utility for all - or will be contained in the Cabins of executives like CEO, MDs?

3.    Will it operate During office hours or beyond office hours as well?

4.    Does that need to have a locking system?

5.    Geographical Location - Where the Refrigerator needs to be operated (For climatic conditions). 

6.    End use - To allow employees to store their food or a commercial one that will act as a vending machine?

Based on the above possibilities, Let us take the use cases separately:

For a common use in the Cafeteria:

User Persona: -Employees who preserve their food and Soft drinks during the non-office hours

Admin Team – Who wishes to offer free soft drinks to the office employees to improve their productivity by providing refreshments to employees during the breaks

Features:

Sr.No

Feature

Priority

1

Refrigeration block which will store the food items and cool them

Must Have

2

Refrigerated shelfs to each employee which will have a lock and that can be opened through the mechanical Number code or the QR code of the Mobile application

Admin Team will have a common shelf which can be opened by QR code of any employee working in the organization

Should have

3

Temperature control – that will enable to change the temperature of the employees’ shelf through the Mobile app

Should have

4

Temperature scheduler – It will enable the employees to schedule the temperature. Like Lower temperature during the office hours and auto switch off during the non-office hours to reduce the Power consumption

Should have

5

Stockout Notice – A weighing based stockout notice to the admin team if the drinks are not available

Would have

6

Water Dispenser – The water dispenser to serve the chilled water to the employees along with other hydrated drinks as requested by the employees through the button push on the Machine

Could have

 

 

 

2. In the Executive cabins 

Users – The top level executive employees who have a cabin and would like to have soft drinks at disposal and food storage

Sr.No

Feature

Priority

1

Refrigeration block which will store the food items and cool them

Must Have

2

Temperature scheduler – It will enable the employees to schedule the temperature. Like Lower temperature during the office hours and auto switch off during the non-office hours to reduce the Power consumption

Should have

3

Stockout Notice – A weighing based stockout notice to the admin team if the drinks are not available

Would have

4

Size constraints – Mini fridge. Wall mounting that would make it easily accessible

Must have

 

 

3. Commercial use as a vending Machine – This is the most powerful

User personas –

1.    Office employees who wish to buy the dairy and preserved food items and soft drinks

2.    Vendors who wish to make the sales through the Vending machine by selling the Products to the employees of the company

 

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badge Gold PM

Hey Vikas,

Here are some suggestions from my side.

Things you did well

  • Clarifying Questions: You asked a good set of clarifying questions to narrow down the scope of the question.
  • User groups: You have broken down the user group into multiple groups.
  • User groups: You spoke about the user groups
  • Pain points: You listed a good number of used cases.
  • Solutions: Great set of solutions

Areas of Improvement 

  • User groups: After you listed the user groups, I suggest you pick one of them and list the pain points associated with that particular user group.
  • Pain points: After listing the pain points/use cases, I suggest you evaluate them based
  • on some criteria that you find relevant (e.g. severity of pain) and prioritize them. You have didn't mentioned any criteria.
  • Prioritize your pain points: Prioritize them based on some evaluation criteria before brainstorming solutions
  • Evaluate your solutions: After listing your solutions, I suggest you evaluate them based on some criteria such as impact to user and implementation cost 
  • Metrics of success: Suggest metrics that help you measure the success of the new product, you are suggesting to build.
  • A summary is required at the end to walk through the whole written answer.
  • Use the editor properly as some of the terms were came mistakenly and hard to read.

You can refer to https://www.productmanagementexercises.com/how-to-answer-a-product-design-question for answering product design questions

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