Product sense case interview answers: a detailed ChatGPT/Claude prompt

Study 10x more interview questions without burning out

Preparing for product sense interviews feels like an endless grind. You know the drill: spending 30 minutes on each practice question, trying to craft the perfect response, and still feeling like you're not covering enough ground to confidently answer questions about a huge range of domains (e.g., fitness, media, productivity, and much more).

What if there was a faster way to level up your product thinking?

the productivity trap of traditional interview prep: “active studying”

Like most people, I used to approach interview prep like a marathon of drilling practice questions. But this approach is inherently limiting:

• A single practice question can take up to 30 minutes

• The time investment makes it impossible to explore a broad range of scenarios

enter: “passive studying”

What if you could study 10x more interview questions without the burnout?

Consider the math:

• Actively practicing 1 question: ~30 minutes

• Passively reading 1 case interview answer: ~3 minutes

Passive studying doesn’t replace active practice — it’s an efficient and relaxing complement :)

However, most existing cases on YouTube and blog posts don’t incorporate all the best practices I’ve learned. That’s why I created a prompt to generate an unlimited number of cases that incorporate those best practices.

How I created this prompt

I watched hundreds of case interview breakdowns and got feedback from product leaders who’ve interviewed candidates in big tech and startups (e.g., thank you, Ishita!)

I consolidated all the best practices in this prompt. Enjoy!

---

Prompt

Act like a director of product management.

Answer this product design case interview question using this framework and best practices.

[Insert question]

The framework:

Part 1: Why should we build this?

• Best practices:

  • Contextualize the opportunity by discussing the macro environment: emerging technologies, shifts in consumer behavior, regulatory changes

  • Discuss existing players in the problem space, their offerings, their strengths, and unmet needs

  • If a specific company is named:

    • Align with company strategy: Assess its core competencies, resources, and capabilities. Discuss how these can be leveraged to win in the space.

    • Highlight unique advantages: For example, if the company has an established user base, brand recognition, or proprietary technology, discuss how these could be leveraged to give the product a competitive edge.

    • Align with the company’s mission and values: Ensure the product strategy complements and reinforces the company's broader mission and vision, showcasing strategic alignment.

  • Discuss whether this problem space is a growing market

  • Decide a goal for the product that you will refer back to throughout the case.

Part 2: Brainstorm 3-5 personas. Then, determine the criteria for prioritizing the personas (e.g., market size) and select 1 persona to prioritize.

• Best practices:

  • Mention personas that are mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive.

  • Think about the kinds of personas who would be the most frequent vs least frequent users.

  • If relevant, think of all sides of the marketplace (e.g., buyers and sellers)

• Mistakes to avoid:

  • Avoid the mistake of only mentioning demographic personas that have no bearing on the case.

Part 3: Brainstorm user journey and pain points. Prioritize 1-2 pain points for each step of the user journey.

• Best practices:

  • Think of 5 steps in the end-to-end user journey.

  • For each step of the user journey, brainstorm 2 to 3 pain points.

  • Prioritize the pain points based on how frustrating the pain point is to the user, and refer to Part 1 about strengths that we should leverage.

• Mistake to avoid:

  • Avoid the mistake of forgetting prioritization criteria.

Part 4: Brainstorm solutions to the pain point, and prioritize 1 solution, and show how additional solutions fit into the product’s roadmap.

• Best practices:

  • Include a mix of highly creative (but somewhat impractical) solutions, and also practical (but less uncreative) solutions.

  • Prioritize solutions using feasibility and referring to Part 1 about strengths that we should leverage, and mention how these prioritization criteria helped you select the final solution.

  • Show how additional solutions fit into the product’s roadmap.

• Mistakes to avoid:

  • Avoid the mistake of forgetting prioritization criteria.

Part 5: How would you measure the success of the product?

• Best practices:

  • Think of 1 north star metric that represents all personas getting value from the product. If the metric involves DAU/WAU/MAU, pick 1 of these and justify why you picked it, and share a definition of “active” that can be measured.

  • Then, think of counter / guardrail / health metrics, which are metrics that represent a negative experience. You should discuss these metrics to ensure that the north star metric isn’t achieved in a way that cannibalizes long-term growth of your product overall, and to get early warnings and signals of things doing wrong.

  • Optional: think of some lagging/downstream metrics that reflect long-term impact on the broader platform (if the solution you propose is part of a larger product).

• Mistakes to avoid:

  • Avoid the mistake of choosing metrics that the platform cannot measure.

Part 6: Risks

• Best practices:

  • Think beyond product risks: market risks, competitors, operational risks, financial risks, bad actors, reputation risks.

• Mistakes to avoid:

  • Avoid the mistake of forgetting mitigations for each risk.

More ways to make the most of this prompt

1. If you want to simulate the interview experience and get feedback on interview answers: Practice a question, and paste your outline into ChatGPT or Claude. Ask for feedback using this framework as a rubric.

2. If you want to get the most out of mock interviews: Show this prompt to a friend, and ask them to evaluate your answer based on this framework and best practices.

3. If you want to reverse engineer real-world products: Apply this framework to deconstruct product decisions behind popular apps.