Product Design question: How would you design an ATM for children?

Appearing for a Product Management Interview soon? It is highly likely that you counter a problem statement like ‘Design a Clock for the Blind’.

Problems like these are asked in many Product Interviews conducted by various companies like FAANG. At first, these questions can look a little bit distressing. There would be hundreds of thoughts coming to your mind, with no right and wrong answer.

Let us first understand why these questions are asked in the first place.

Product Design questions are charged to access your skills to think critically and clearly about a new product or its feature:

• Can you empathise with the users and customers of the products?
• Can you understand the problems these users have?
• Can you build a product to solve these problems which can be economically viable and technologically feasible?

Now, what are the skills on which the person on the other side of the table want’s to rate you on?

User Empathy is one of the skills the interviewer wants you to possess. Product Managers are the advocates of the users. If they don’t understand the users and their problems, they are likely solving the wrong problem.

Thinking from First-Principles is another skill the interviewer is looking for. They want candidates who are obsessed with the problem. And what a better problem statement than Product Design to gauge both the skills together.

Keeping these points in mind, let us try to build an ATM for children where I’ll be walking you through the approach. Having a good approach in mind can help you solve these questions with ease.

Understanding the Problem

“Design an ATM for Children”

What is an ATM? It is a machine used to deposit and withdraw cash, which authorises users with a bank’s debit or credit card.

What segment of children are we talking about? Let’s assume our TG is children from age 6 and above, who can read and understand basic maths.

Ask the interviewer if the definitions are fine and if you shall proceed further.

To design an ATM, we need to understand the various use cases to solve for the children. Let’s do this by first talking about the users

Understanding the Users

Once we have defined the users, you shall understand the motivation behind using the product, the use cases of the product, and the features of the users.

What is the motivation to use the ATM?

• To deposit money in their account which they got as pocket money or as gifts from relatives
• To withdraw money when they are away from parents to purchase food items, transport, etc.
• To view balance in their account, or know the recent transactions
• To learn finances and savings, for educational purposes

To better understand what all features should be present in our to-be-designed ATM, let us deep dive into the user journey of a child attempting to use the ATM.

User flow

The user flow diagram shows how a user works through an application to complete a specific task. Product teams often make the user flows to design new products or features. Detailed user flows allows the Product teams to present the necessary information to the users, and to facilitate the completion of desired tasks in the shortest time possible

Note: You’ll find people using the terms ‘User Flows’ and ‘User journey’ interchangeably, but they are not the same. Users’ paths through an app or website are referred to as user flows. A user journey is more comprehensive. All points of contact between the product and its users are included — from viewing its advertising to interacting with the product to raising a query at the help desk.

Let us make the flow of a person using an ATM

Locates ATM > Enter’s bank card > select language > selects the service (withdraw money, etc)> enters the PIN > money dispersed by machine > collect payment > collect receipt.

Based on the user flow and user features we discussed above, the next part of our solution would be to find the pain points for the children, to define the specifications of the ATM.

Outlining the Pain Points

In the context of a product, a pain point refers to any problem or concern users encounter during the use of the product. Defining pain points should be driving towards an understanding of the needs of the users and the customers.

By going through the steps of the user flow one at a time, identify the pain points for a child using an ATM.

Now, here comes the fun part. Once we identify the pain points, we can brainstorm various product ideas to address them. Here’s your chance to show off your passion for product management. Follow first-principles thinking and come up with simple and high-impact ideas to solve the user’s pain points.

For the ATM usage flow, we’ll identify the pain points and try to come up with ideas to address them, together.

• Locates ATM

With so many ATMs present, the children must find out which one is friendly to them. Need to show outside an ATM room if this ATM is child friendly. Hence, we need some kind of marker for children-friendly ATMs.

• Enters Card

The space to insert the card must be at a height where children of 6 years of age can reach. The cardholder shall be highlighted for the children to easily find them and should understand how to insert the card.

So, we need to design the ATMs according to the heights of the children. The cardholder must be highlighted, and show by an illustration how to insert the card. Children will be able to understand illustrations.

• Select language

Including voice instructions will be a good idea as the child would be able to read as well as listen to the options available. We can’t expect them to be very proficient in either of them.

• Selects the required service

Children might get confused with the banking terms. To counter this, we shall explain the children in very simple words and include illustrations. This not only makes the transaction smooth but can also educate them about different banking and financial terms. Having voice commands can help here as well.

• Enters the PIN

This can be a case that children forget the PIN easily, or the parents might find children to have PIN as insecure because it can be extracted by others from children.

We can have fingerprint scanners in the ATM to solve this pain point. Transactions can be done once fingerprints once authorised.

• Collecting payment

We don’t want children to have a lot of money with them at once. It can be difficult to handle many currency notes at once. Also, our users are withdrawing money for food and transport, it makes sense to have a limit on the withdrawable amount.

• Collect receipt

While thinking about this action, I think there is a need to notify the parents as well about the transaction. An SMS must be triggered to the parent’s mobile number with the location of the ATM and the amount withdrawn by the child from the account

Designing the ATM

Once you are done with the product ideas to solve the pain points, you’ll need to list down all the features you can include while building the product. The features should then be prioritised in a way that best supports the vision of the product. This can be shared by the interviewer with you, or you’ll be asked to define one.

How to prioritise? As a general rule, you shall calculate and see the ease of implementation of a feature, the number of users it’ll affect, and the quantitative impact it’ll have on a user being affected. Their amalgamation of these three metrics will tell you which feature to prioritise

The interviewer can also help in prioritisation by sharing the product vision and the north star metric of the product with you.

Most likely, the interviewer will ask you to make wire-frames for the design of the product. In that case, you’ll have to define the UX of the product by keeping in mind the prioritised feature list you identified from studying the user flows.

Mention the Pitfalls

Near the end of your solution, you should mention the possible pitfalls of the various product features you included. In this way, you can demonstrate that you have a multidimensional thought process. You can think about and anticipate possible future problems with the different product features you discussed.

For example, in our case of designing an ATM for children, telling out loud the account details of the customer through the ATM’s voice would not be a good idea as it can give rise to a safety concern.

Summarising

To design an ATM for children, we first defined the scope of the problem and understood the user. We made user flows to understand the user more and to identify the pain points.

We then applied our product management skills to make product features to solve the various pain points. Since we cannot achieve everything at once, we prioritised the features and designed the ATM based on them. We also identified the pitfalls and discussed them with the interviewer.

More Problems to Practise

Sharing a few more product design questions that were asked in big tech companies

• Design a pen for an astronaut
• Design a phone for deaf people
• Design a bike-sharing app
• Design a clock for blind people