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PMInterviewKit
In this module11 lessons
  1. The framework in one pageFree
  2. Clarify the prompt and set the goal
  3. Pick a user and find real pain points
  4. Generate solutions worth discussing
  5. Prioritize and defend the trade-offs
  6. Close with how you would measure it
  7. The favorite product question
  8. Worked answers 1 to 4
  9. Worked answers 5 to 8
  10. Worked answers 9 to 12
  11. Common traps and how to recover

Clarify the prompt and set the goal

Ask the few clarifying questions that change your design, state the rest as assumptions, and set a two-part goal in under four minutes.

7 min readFull kit

What the Frame rung is for

The first rung of the Design Ladder is Frame. Its job is to turn a vague prompt into a problem you can actually work on, and to do it fast. Interviewers make prompts vague on purpose. "Improve a language-learning app" could mean a dozen different problems. They want to see whether you narrow it with care or charge ahead.

The Frame rung has three parts:

  1. Ask the questions whose answers would change your design.
  2. State everything else as an assumption, out loud.
  3. Set the goal, in two halves: what the company wants and what the user wants.

It ends with one rung sentence, "We're building X for Y, and success means Z", followed by one more that announces your route through the rest of the answer. Aim to get there in three to four minutes.

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Practice this lesson

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