30 Product Design Whiteboarding Prompts to Practice Before Your Interview

That full motion is: clarify → frame → prioritize → sketch → explain → measure.

Use these prompts for timed practice. Pick one, set a timer for 30–45 minutes, and answer out loud as if an interviewer is in the room.

How to practice each prompt

For each prompt, write down:

1. Primary user
2. User goal
3. Business goal
4. Key constraints
5. Main pain point
6. 2–3 solution directions
7. V1 choice
8. Core flow
9. Edge states
10. Success metric

Consumer product prompts

1. Design a better grocery shopping experience for busy parents.
2. Improve airport check-in for first-time international travelers.
3. Design a group trip planning experience for friends.
4. Improve onboarding for a budgeting app.
5. Design a mobile experience for finding last-minute childcare.
6. Improve restaurant reservations for people with dietary restrictions.
7. Design a better experience for returning online purchases.
8. Improve checkout for a fashion ecommerce app.
9. Design a public transport app for tourists in a new city.
10. Improve the experience of booking a fitness class.

Marketplace and community prompts

11. Design a marketplace for freelance designers and startup founders.
12. Improve trust in a secondhand furniture marketplace.
13. Design a way for neighbors to lend and borrow household items.
14. Improve the experience of finding a tutor online.
15. Design a creator collaboration platform.

B2B product prompts

16. Design a dashboard for customer support managers.
17. Improve the expense approval workflow for finance teams.
18. Design a workflow for sales teams preparing for customer calls.
19. Improve onboarding for employees using internal tools.
20. Design a research repository for product teams.
21. Improve triaging bug reports across product and engineering.
22. Design permissions for an enterprise collaboration tool.

AI product design prompts

23. Design an AI assistant for customer support agents.
24. Improve the experience of reviewing AI-generated content before publishing.
25. Design an AI research assistant for product managers.
26. Design a trustworthy AI tutor for students.
27. Improve memory controls in an AI assistant.
28. Design an AI copilot for designers analyzing customer feedback.
29. Design an AI travel planning agent.
30. Design an AI product that helps nontechnical users debug website issues.

Example prompt walkthrough

Prompt: Improve onboarding for a budgeting app.

Clarifying questions

• Who is the primary user — first-time budgeter, debt reducer, couple, student, or high-income saver?
• What is the business goal — activation, bank-link completion, retention, or paid conversion?
• What platform should I assume?

Assumption

I’ll focus on first-time budgeters who feel anxious about money. The business goal is activation, defined as linking an account and creating a first weekly budget.

Core problem

Users drop off because budgeting feels judgmental, complex, and time-consuming.

Possible directions

1. Guided setup with plain-language categories
2. AI-generated first budget based on spending
3. Goal-first onboarding around one immediate win

V1

I’d choose goal-first onboarding plus an AI-generated first budget — it gets users to value fastest.

Core flow

Choose goal → link account → AI suggests budget → user edits → first weekly plan → success state.

Edge states

• User refuses bank linking
• Account connection fails
• Income is irregular
• Spending data is incomplete
• User feels the budget is unrealistic

Metrics

Primary: setup completion rate. Secondary: time to first budget, first-week return rate, manual edit rate, and user confidence rating.

Want feedback on your answer?

Run any of these prompts in Whiteboarding Challenge and get a scorecard, canvas feedback, and drills for your next rep.