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Product sensewarm-up
Pick an app on your phone you love. How would you improve it for someone opening it for the first time?
How to approach it
Reframe the app through a new user's eyes: what do they need to understand or achieve in the first session to come back tomorrow?
How a strong answer opens
“I'll use a recipe app I open most nights. For a first-time user, success is cooking one recipe this week, so I'll walk through the first five minutes and find where a newcomer stalls.”
Outline of a strong answer
Try answering out loud for a few minutes before you open this.
- Pick the app and define what a successful first session looks like
- Walk through the first five minutes and mark where a newcomer stalls
- Name the one moment of value the first session must reach
- Suggest two or three changes that shorten the path to that moment
- Choose one and explain what you would trade away for it
- Measure it with day-one and day-seven return rates for new users
Where this question usually goes wrong
Improving the app for yourself, a power user, instead of looking at it with fresh eyes and finding the first moment a new user gives up.
Learn the method
The favorite product question in Module 1, Product sense and design.
The full kit has worked answers in full, start to finish, for every round type. $129 once.
More product sense questions
- What is your favorite product, and why?
- Tell me about a product you use every day that you think is badly designed. How would you fix it?
- Design an alarm clock for people who are deaf or hard of hearing.
- Design a refrigerator for a family of five.
- Design a product to help elderly people manage their medications.