Mission 1: Dealing with Ambiguity

How to think through ambiguous product interview questions?

In product design interviews, broad prompts like “Design X” often cause candidates to jump straight into solution mode.

When candidates hear a broad prompt, many immediately start listing features or sketching UI flows before defining the problem space. Experienced PMs avoid jumping to solutions. They start by clarifying the objective, constraints, and target user before proposing solutions.

This lesson focuses on structuring ambiguous product design prompts.

You’ll learn a structured, repeatable approach to breaking down open-ended interview questions and applying a framework to keep your thinking organized in the face of ambiguity. This approach avoids rigid acronyms and emphasizes practical reasoning you can apply consistently across different design scenarios.

The focus is on a practical, industry-aligned approach to product design problems.

Why do these interview questions feel so hard?

It’s not that you don’t have good ideas. It’s that you have too many. And under pressure, too many options feel like no direction at all. You get 30 to 45 minutes to make sense of chaos. Most people dive into UI or technical ideas way too fast. Strong PMs do something else:

• Let’s clarify what success looks like first.

• Who exactly is the user here?

• There are a few ways to approach this. Let me walk you through them.

That’s structure. And structure buys you time, confidence, and clarity.

A leaner way to use CIRCLES

You may have encountered the CIRCLES method before. It is a widely used framework introduced by Lewis Lin. While it provides structure, it can sound mechanical if applied too rigidly in a live interview.

Here’s what the classic CIRCLES acronym stands for:

It is useful, but it can feel too formal and hard to recall under pressure. Here is a simpler version designed for interviews:

We drop the “S” at the end because it usually happens naturally as part of your close.

Think of this like muscle memory. The goal is to think clearly without getting lost in your own ideas. You don’t need to announce each step. Just use them to anchor your thinking and structure your response. And remember: In the chaos of a live interview, even partial structure is better than none.

That’s what separates a confident PM from a scattered one.

What it looks like in practice

Here’s how an experienced PM structures their thinking out loud:

• Let’s clarify the goal. Are we trying to remove anxiety completely, or help manage it?

• Who’s our user? Commuters, road-trippers, delivery drivers?

• What exactly do they fear: running out of battery, or not knowing where to charge?

• Here are three ideas: smart routing, charger heat maps, or battery-conserving driving mode.

• Smart routing is easiest to build, but it depends on third-party data. Battery saver may need custom firmware.

• Success? Confidence scores improve. Detour rates go down. Repeat usage up.

That’s how you take a messy ask and shape it into something crisp. It is not perfect, but it is clear, thoughtful, and grounded in user value.

One trick to keep you focused

The question above alone helps you avoid over-scoping the problem. You are ready to begin. Your first interview question is: Design a feature for electric vehicle owners.