C · Value judgment and direction setting

Product judgment

Whether the user problem is real and the solution worth building.

Classification boundary

Include: Include questions about real user problems, solution value, and product experience goals.

Choose a neighboring leaf when: Use A product discovery/design for research methods and design craft, and prioritization for sequencing.

This capability may appear in standards across different stages. Explore stage expectations

38 questions

Choose a group based on the evidence you need. Groups follow existing question formats, not difficulty or mandatory prerequisites. Each batch has up to eight questions.

Judgment and options38

Compare goals, constraints, options, and trade-offs.

Questions 1–8

A major customer will pay a high price for a custom feature, but reuse by other customers is uncertain. Ongoing maintenance, permissions, and data rules add cost, and sales has promised a delivery date. How would you compare a one-off build, productizing it, a service, or declining—and decide whether to invest?
Interviews and support tickets repeatedly mention the same problem, but few users in a pilot are willing to change their current workflow. How would you determine whether the issue is how the need was expressed, switching cost, target-user selection, or problem priority?
You inherit a mature product with a stable user base and stalled growth, and the team wants to launch new features immediately. What product understanding would you build in the first two weeks before deciding where to invest?
A major competitor makes a feature free that large customers have repeatedly requested, but you have not observed customer losses because of it. How would you determine whether this is an emerging competitive risk, a negotiation signal, or a feature gap not worth following?
A feature is used often but has not improved retention or payment. How would you determine whether it creates core value, reflects habit, or rewards the wrong behavior?
How did you apply the industry's practices to your current business? Which applied directly, which needed adapting, and which did you judge not to apply, and why?
A high-traffic flow was changed into sequential steps, raising overall completion. Support reports, however, show users struggle to find exit, undo, or change options. How would you determine whether this is a real experience improvement, a segment difference, or a metric artifact?
Is your approach unique or forward-looking? What did you bet on at the time, was it later proven right, and what would show that you were wrong?

Questions 9–16

You say this solution is the most advanced in the industry. What is that based on, and what did you compare against, along which dimensions, and as of when?
A legacy feature has few users but supports month-end reconciliation, and maintenance cost keeps rising. How would you compare migration, paid maintenance, and retirement?
Describe a product decision where a short-term metric worsened, but the team expected a longer-term benefit. What evidence informed the decision, how did you monitor it, and what later evidence linked the outcome to that choice rather than outside factors?
Describe a technology-platform project you worked on that few teams used and that produced little visible business value after launch. What evidence or assumptions justified the investment at the time? Which assumptions did later evidence disprove, and what validation did you add?
The request is 'add an Export to Excel button to the order list page.' Show how you move from the surface request to the user's behavioral obstacle, and then to the value outcome.
A colleague proposes adding a settings switch to a feature. Before discussing how to build it, which questions would you ask to judge whether the switch is worth building?
Overall onboarding conversion falls. The funnel shows the most exits at address verification, but support records point to identity checks. How would you choose research and fix priorities?
How does technology truly drive the business, rather than merely support it? Tell me about a time technology opened a possibility the business did not have before, and how you judged it was not just technology amusing itself.

Questions 17–24

When you did your research, what were the industry level, the best practice in this direction, and the level already reached inside your company? Where does your solution fall, and why?
Drawing on available material and direct observation, which kinds of companies do you think this technology will affect most over the next two years? Explain your own judgment and evidence rather than only repeating industry reports. What does it mean for your company, and what have you done to test or respond to it?
The team wants to 'use our own product more,' but the last experience night produced only scattered impressions. How would you design it so self-use becomes a feedback loop that runs from a real task to a verified fix?
Brand asks for low-contrast text, but users with low vision struggle to read it; increasing contrast changes the brand presentation. How would you make and validate the design decision?
A mobile onboarding redesign helps more users complete setup on day one, but active retention drops two weeks later; the flow also requests more permissions. How would you judge whether short-term conversion masks lower long-term value or loss of trust?
An AI assistant increases apparent task-completion rates, but users recheck every result and some errors cause downstream rework. How would you judge whether automation actually lowers total task cost?
A new checkout flow omits a fee explanation and increases payment conversion, but refund questions and cancellations also rise. How would you decide whether short-term conversion is worth it and identify evidence that the design created an expectation gap?
Analytics show target users skipping the product's main flow and using exports, spreadsheets, or manual coordination instead; the team believes this is a user-habit problem. How would you decide whether the product conflicts with real work practices?

Questions 25–32

A new operations dashboard is visited often, but interviews show most people only take screenshots before reviews and do not adjust resources or actions. How would you decide whether it creates decision value or only serves a display need?
A keyboard-navigation defect affects few users but prevents them from completing a critical task; a feature expected to add revenue is also waiting. How would you compare user harm, obligations, opportunity cost, and repair scope?
A premium feature available only on mobile has few users, but they renew and show strong willingness to pay; continued support increases cross-platform differences and testing cost. How would you decide whether to expand, retain it as a premium capability, or stop investing?
Task completion reaches 95%, but half of users rely on support or colleagues. The team plans to use completion as its launch-success metric. What would you add?
The same customer submits changing feature requests, all pointing to delayed month-end reconciliation. How would you uncover the underlying problem and validate priority?
A new feature reaches only half its adoption target, but many target users have not received training or access. How would you diagnose and adjust the plan?
A feature is rarely used, yet enterprise procurement and renewal interviews consistently cite it as a safeguard. How would you assess value and decide investment?
A configuration form has 28 fields. A multi-step design may increase abandonment, while one page is hard to understand. How would you gather evidence and decide?

Questions 33–38

Search returns hundreds of records, yet users repeatedly combine filters and export to spreadsheets. How would you distinguish retrieval, ranking, task understanding, and result explanation problems?
A map relies on dragging and zooming, making the same location data hard to access on mobile and by keyboard. How would you design equivalent controls?
A key customer wants to skip an approval step to speed up processing, but other roles rely on approval records for audits. How would you assess local efficiency and system risk?
Sales wants to promise support for an external platform next quarter, but technical validation has not started and the customer planned a migration around it. How would you handle timing and commitment?
Customers keep asking for options, and support teams use flags as workarounds. How would you distinguish stable needs, temporary exceptions, and a broken product abstraction?
High-value customers want more approvals, everyday users want fewer steps, and internal teams want extra checks. How would you return to the shared task and decide what to validate first?

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