What is App Critique?

This is a session where you analyze an existing product in a meeting with the interviewer. You can choose any product or select from a provided list from an interviewer, which may include well-known products like Airbnb, Spotify, Booking, and others. The session typically lasts for approximately 45 minutes to 1 hour.

A common problem I've noticed is that candidates often criticize the product in an unstructured way. They might only talk about the way it looks or share random thoughts without any connection. To avoid making these mistakes, it's important to prep your plan and narrative beforehand.

General recommendations

• Read the guide and recommendations in this document, and copy the parts you find useful.
• If you have never heard of such a session and have not participated in it yourself, watch a couple of examples of "App Critique" on YouTube.
• Practice critiquing 3-4 well-known products, such as Spotify, Booking, Airbnb, Slack, Uber, and other services/products you know and use. I recommend writing down the key steps in your analysis to remember them better and be able to iterate on and improve them. Preparing the analysis in advance can also help you perform more confidently during the interview.
• If you have time, run a mock app critique session with a friend or mentor to collect external feedback and better prepare for the actual interview (set a 45-minute call with them and pretend that you’re doing an app critique at the interview).

Skills they expect you to demonstrate

❶ Product thinking

Ability to identify problems, business needs and understand how to build successful products.

• Good idea: starting the app critique by providing a quick overview of the product's context. This may include explaining why the product exists, the problems it solves, the main types of people who use the product, how it generates revenue, and more.
• Bad idea: jumping straight into reviewing the design and visual details.

❷ Critical thinking and Intentionality

Ability to understand the reasoning behind decisions and provide constructive criticism and analysis.

• Good idea: grounding your thinking in user and business needs. For example, you can say, "I believe they chose this design pattern because it solves problem X the best."
• Good idea: considering alternative options when reviewing a particular design pattern in a product. For example, you might say, "The product uses tab bar for the main navigation. They could have considered a sidebar menu, burger menu, and [other options]. I believe they chose tabs because [...].”
• Good idea: suggesting areas of improvement. For instance, "I believe the accessibility of these controls could be improved by increasing the font size to meet accessibility standards and improving the contrast."