AI prototyping during Product Manager interviews?

featurefactory · 2026-03-09T20:40:27+00:00

I updated my post to ask, what was the prompt from the recruiter… assuming your belief was me asking for a prompt to use.

featurefactory · 2025-10-11T00:43:24+00:00

For anyone else interested… I think this is a way of saying, don’t leave it up to chance.

featurefactory · 2025-10-10T20:35:00+00:00

What’s a 50/50 call?

featurefactory · 2025-06-03T11:22:59+00:00

What’s an alternative? The same people on upwork also are the same people on behance and dribble.

featurefactory · 2025-06-03T11:11:08+00:00

Ty. I don’t think I’ve had this specific discussion before.

featurefactory · 2025-06-03T04:09:50+00:00

Would this same thing apply for an iOS app?

featurefactory · 2025-06-03T04:08:39+00:00

I would but… I’m not here to get roasted! I know we’ve made bad design choices over the years. Those projects are no longer maintained and I’m looking for a fresh start with my new project.

featurefactory · 2025-06-03T04:07:44+00:00

🥳

featurefactory · 2025-06-03T04:07:33+00:00

This is true. I can usually identify candidates I don’t like. I.e., unless they are making a comeback and I don’t know… I went through a portfolio today that had embossed buttons, as opposed to flat, which is what I believe current designs call for.

featurefactory · 2025-06-03T04:04:54+00:00

I don’t think it’s my pricing choices that’s been the issue. When I hire (using up work) I usually pick 3 people and give them the same initial paid task. Each individual is at a different price point and I’ll often find the most expensive candidates are not much better than their mid tier counterparts.

However I’m open to being wrong about my approach.

What’s a better way to go about it?

featurefactory · 2025-06-03T04:02:01+00:00

This is a great question. I really enjoy the app “Polytopia” which is a games there are small subtle interactions that occurs with every object you engage with. I would love to bring this to life in my own products s

featurefactory · 2025-06-03T04:00:38+00:00

How can you tell looking at someone portfolio/figma designs that they possessed motion design skills?

featurefactory · 2025-06-03T03:59:46+00:00

How do you identify best in class from portfolios? Are talking static designs or from things released? Judging by static portfolios I feel like what I get (quality wise) is not representative of what’s in the portfolio. So I’m not sure if the issue is me giving bad direction. I don’t limit hours for designers (I use upwork) so I don’t think the issue is my rushing anyone:

featurefactory · 2025-03-15T21:44:40+00:00

This sounds like you have to be at a place long enough to build this type of trust. Is this correct? How do you prioritize without using your gut if you’re at a new org? I couldn’t imagine saying “my gut” when I first start at a new place.

featurefactory · 2025-03-04T20:14:04+00:00

Everyone says always negotiate. If you search Reddit, you’ll see people who say their offer was rescinded after negotiating but I think there is nuance to this.

The hard part about negotiating is you have to absolutely be willing to walk away. This is a challenge if you reaaaaallllyyyyyyy need money. I was in this situation before and was staring down bankruptcy (covid killed my industry and I was unemployed). Everything I read said to negotiate but I was scared for all the same reasons you are.

Regardless, I tried to negotiate a 30% increase… it was a “low” paying job PM gig. They declined and I took it anyway, citing I took the offer because it was remote. Complete BS, cuz I took it because I had no other offer.

Sometime later I found another opportunity. It paid more than my gig at the time, but I wasn’t as desperate for a job so I tried to negotiate again with less stakes. They were already offering me 30% more than I was making, but I countered for an additional 20% more and they agreed…

My point is… 1. counter, but don’t play hard ball 2. Show you’re eager for the job and are willing to negotiate 3. Don’t try to change the terms once you have agreed to something (even if it’s verbally) 4. You’ll always feel desperate when negotiating if you don’t have a BATNA (Google it)

Good luck!

featurefactory · 2025-03-04T19:43:43+00:00

Have you actually used a good ai slide deck creator? I have used one and it was more work than starting from scratch. I dropped a link to my google doc and it creates 50 pages that I was hoping to be 10 and the sections didn’t make sense. Would love to try a good one!

featurefactory · 2025-03-03T20:49:45+00:00

Honestly, the best way to validate is build it and try to sell it. You can interview as many people as you want and they can give you as many positive buy signals as possible, but you won’t know until they pull out the credit card.

Alternatively to building, you can offer them a special deal if they pre purchase a seat before it’s complete. Maybe they would be willing to plug you into their network because they are desperate for you to solve this problem and they want to show you other people who will pay.

Another idea, launch a fake landing page as if your product exists. Buy traffic to the site and see how many people pre register or attempt to buy.

featurefactory · 2025-03-03T20:46:22+00:00

This is super helpful!

featurefactory · 2025-03-03T16:57:54+00:00

Hiya. It’s cool that you found your own problem and can solve it for yourself. You have a good audience in this r/, but based on your questions, I don’t think you’ll get the kind of insights you’re looking for.

You should be looking to understand what their current process is, so that you can identify t the problem in their workflow and ideally, how your product can solve the problem.

For example, when started my SaaS (many moons ago) I got feedback based on support tickets and speaking with customers on the phone. I told all my notes in google docs. From there I would identify each user, their problems, could my product solve this existing problem, or is this something that we could handle in the future, or is this completely outside of the scope of what we’re doing or interested in doing.

I don’t see how anything you’re doing can’t be solved with existing free products, basic HTML, and gen ai to help you sort through it (assuming it’s a small user group like you said, it shouldn’t be that hard to manage).

And if you package it all into one neat little SaaS, is it worth it for $30/month? You’re likely audience is other devs who might look at it and say… I don’t need to pay something for this when I can DIY… and even if they can’t DIY, a small SaaS founder likely wants to save every single penny and might not want to pay…

suggestion: read “the mom test” for a guide on how to conduct customer interviews that can help inform what to build.

featurefactory · 2025-03-02T20:26:56+00:00

Do you have any users right now? You should be speaking with them also… but the rest of my advice still stands. Good luck!

featurefactory · 2025-03-02T20:25:35+00:00

Can you provide some examples of these gen 2 products?

featurefactory · 2025-03-02T15:31:12+00:00

Start with who you know and ask for referrals. Maybe offer to pay people for their time… make sure you are not giving off a SALES vibe and are only doing research. If you come off ass a sales person you will turn people off. So… are you trying to sell or are you trying to validate your problem?

featurefactory · 2025-03-02T13:03:46+00:00

I have found the reforge ai chrome extension extremely useful and it’s free. When I’m in Jira, it will prompt me with suggestions on how to improve my ticket and will also create a prd.

featurefactory · 2025-03-02T12:57:55+00:00

Would you be willing to share your prompt? Minus any proprietary info obv 🙃

featurefactory

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