Design an airport ATM for elderly travellers

Design a specialised ATM inside an international airport tailored for elderly travellers.

Context

Older travellers arriving in a new country need local cash fast, while tired, rushed and sometimes confused by currency, fees and unfamiliar machines. Card skimming and shoulder-surfing are common at airports.

Clarifying questions to ask first

Arrivals or departures?
Are we the bank or the airport?
Foreign cards supported?

How to approach it

Clarify the business goal and tie the product to the company's mission before touching solutions
Segment users by behaviour or need (not just age), cover the whole ecosystem, and pick one segment with explicit criteria
Walk the end-to-end journey and separate real pain points from feature requests
Brainstorm a range of solutions (quick fix, data/ML, moonshot) and prioritise with impact vs effort
Define a North Star, funnel metrics and guardrails, then call out risks, edge cases and mitigations

Framework: Goal & mission -> Ecosystem & segment choice -> Journey & pain points -> Solutions & prioritisation -> Metrics & guardrails -> Risks & edge cases

Sample answer

Segment by need: low vision, hearing loss, low tech confidence, first-time international traveller
The core pains are confusion about fees/exchange rates and fear of fraud
Time pressure makes mistakes likely

Journey: find ATM > choose language > insert card > pick amount > fees > collect cash and card
Solutions: large high-contrast screen with voice guidance, plain fee display in home currency, suggested amounts, privacy hood, help button to a live agent
Metrics: North Star = successful withdrawals per elderly user; guardrails = card retentions, fraud reports, abandonment

A high-contrast, voice-guided ATM with home-currency fee display and a live help button. Measure successful withdrawals, guarded by abandonment and fraud.

What interviewers look for

Physical and cognitive accessibility
Fee transparency
Fraud and safety
Failure states (card swallowed, language)