A watch for parents alone

A product design question from a product manager interview, set at Vetra Wearables, a fictional consumer hardware company.

The question

Skills this case tests

A starting structure

Users: buyer (adult child), wearer (parent), responder; one core job first, then daily wear time × alert reliability

How to approach this case

Clarify why the company wants this: a new revenue line, recurring revenue or brand. Leadership is sceptical, so your answer must end with a business case. Then separate the people involved. Someone pays and sets it up, someone wears it every day, and someone has to respond when something goes wrong. Pick the hardest user to design for and choose one core job rather than a long feature list. Ask what the company learned from any trials with its current products. Hardware has real limits: battery, screen, connectivity and cost all trade off against each other, and older users may not use smartphones. A strong close defines a simple first version, a north star tied to whether people keep wearing it, a guardrail on missed emergencies, unit economics, and a small pilot with kill criteria.

The full method for product design (product sense) questions · A worked example answer

After the mock interview you get scores on five skills, what to fix with quotes from your answers, and the ideal path for this case.