Long story short, I want to learn if they are able to think. That’s it.
Interviewees get surprised that the task isn’t about design at all.
“I’m hungry. Find a solution for my problem”
This task is for everyone, no matter what your experience and specialization is.
And there are 2 types of people (basically):
- Hey, you can order a delivery…
- Hold on, let’s think it through…
Thats where the product thinking steps in. There are plenty ways to solve the problem.
What if I’m fasting and I need anything but food now?
Or maybe I can’t wait and could have a snack. If yes, do I have it in my fridge?
For this task you can create a persona, find pain points, design user tasks and build a solid map from the problem to the solution that is exactly for me.
In conclusion
I recommend not to get too specific with the questions, let interviewee to be free at discovering the problem. You can be be a friendly helper, a colleague who helps them in solution discovery.
Here’s what you can learn about the person after such simple task:
- Ability to solve problems of the exact person
- Go through the whole journey from collecting the info and up to the final solution
- Ability to perform user interviews and extract important information from vis-a-vis
- Experience of collective work (yeah, that team work)
- How good they are at argumentation
- And of course, the flexibility of their mind with solving simple but versatile problem