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How would you design a heater for kids?

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Interviewee:   Usually 0-4weeks are called New Born, 4weeks to 1 year - Infant, 1-3 Toddler, 3 -5 Pre schooler 5-12 School goers 13-19 Teenagers / Adolescent.  Can I focus on 5year-12 year as a range to solve this problem or Do you have any specific age range?

Interviewer: 5-12 is good.

Interviewee:  When you say heater, is it Food heater (Microwave), Water heater (Kettle) or Room heater?

Interviewer: Portable room heater

Interviewee:  Let's expand this customer segment 

  1. 5-7 year old - Usually still naughty and doesn't completely understand / care about the consequences of any action until they personally experience it. Does not understand instructions / labels easily but understands color coding (Red means danger or stop)
  2. 7-10 year old - Usually little matured than 5 year old but are very curious to understand how things work or how a certain thing can be used for something else.  Portable heater when switched on but use it as a bat when it is off.
  3. 10-12 year old - Mostly understands the consequences

Now let's define the Need

  • Ability to switch on/off the heater when needed (While playing, doing homework or before going to bed or when you wake up in-between)
  • Accidental damage should not affect the kids adversly - Auto Switchoff when tripped 
  • Accidental or intentional touch should not burn the skin 
  • Shows clear indication of when it is ON (Red Color) and Off but Connected to Power outlet (Green Color) No Color - Let the Parent or the Adult handle it
  • Over heating protection - After certain temparature, the heater to automatically shut off
  • Large base so it is not easy to trip

List of Solution:

  • A large base infrared portable heater protected by outer cover that doesn't allow anyone to touch the infrared tubes
  • The base has 1 light (Red - The heater is On Green - The heater is Off but connected to outlet) - Google Assistant or Alexa integration to switch on or off
  • Temparature  display - Max set to 75F by default - Only editable by Parents via Voice Assistant (Parent's voice can change it and not kids')
  • Auto off if tripped.
  • Mobile alert to Parents - Mobile Alerts when it is tripped off

 

Summary:  Develop a infrared portable heater with a large base and an auto trip off that has integration with Voice Assistant (Google and Alexa).  The voice assistant is important as it educates kids to operate it without going near our touching it, even though all the necessary precautions are built in within the heater. 

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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 broken down the user group into mutiple groups and picked a particular one 
  • Solutions: Great set of solutions to solve for the pain points listed earlier

Areas of Improvement 

  • Prioritize your pain points: Prioritize your points based on some evaluation criteria before brainstorming solutions   
  • Evaluate your solutions: After listing your solutions, I suggest you evaluate each one of them using same criteria. For example, the criteria can be impact to user and implementation cost. Perhaps consider putting them into a table 
  • Describe your prioritized solutions in more detail: After suggesting what you're building, if there is time, describe in more detail how you're going to build your product
  • Describe tradeoffs: If there is time, describe what sort of trade offs your suggested product will have. Are there any risks you have to keep in mind when building this product?
  • Metrics of success: If there is time, suggest metrics that help you measure the success of the new product you're suggesting to build 
  • Answer format: This is just a feedback for the format of your answers so people can easily read them and post more feedback. I suggest using the editor to have a bold and larger font size heading for each section of your answer:)
Check out the article How to answer a Product Design question in a Product Manager job interview as it might help you get a better idea of expected framework for product design questions 
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Get access to 2,346 pm interview questions and answers to give yourself a strong edge against other candidates that are interviewing for the same position
Get access to over 238 hours of video material containing an interview prep course, recorded mock interviews by expert PMs, group practice sessions, and QAs with expert PMs
Boost your confidence in PM interviews by attending peer to peer mock interview practices, group practices, and QA sessions with expert PMs