And my favorite interview question.

Published Sep 16, 2025 · Around 2 minutes to read

My favorite interview question is “What’s a well-designed product you’ve used recently?” I was asked this when I interviewed at E*TRADE, and I use it in my interviews now. My answer at that time was You Need a Budget (YNAB): a super-intuitive app to manage your budget and pay down debt fast.

In 2021, my answer changed to Carvana.

Buying or selling cars gives me major anxiety. I hate the sales pressure tactics from dealerships when buying. And selling a car feels like a drag. In 2019, I wanted to sell my 2009 Honda Accord which had a KBB value of $4k. It wasn’t worth selling it at that price, so I decided to drive it until it died.

But then used car prices went crazy during COVID. The KBB for my Accord shot up to $10k. I decided to sell, and that’s when I saw an ad for Carvana. I could sell my car without leaving my house and haggling with buyers. I was skeptical at first. The process seemed way too easy.

I filled out some details about my car online, got my final valuation, and got a date to have the car picked up from my driveway. That’s it? I still didn’t believe it could be that easy.

I was paranoid that they would find reject my car when they inspected it in person, so I spent $300 getting it inspected and detailed.

On the day of the pickup, a Carvana rep showed up, turned on the car, took a couple of notes, and then handed me a check for $10k in exchange for the keys and title. The process took 5 minutes.

Best UX ever.

From a customer point of view, I was dealing with one “team”: Carvana. Behind the scenes, they had sales, marketing, design, PM, development, customer service, and operations teams all working together to deliver a great, singular experience.

Good experiences happen during handoffs. You might have an excellent digital shopping experience, but if the delivery is subpar, or if the customer service is bad, it sours the entire experience.

Designing good end to end journeys means designing the ENTIRE journey. Not just your piece of it.

Don’t ship your org chart.

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P.S. I could have saved $300 for the inspection and detailing. They didn’t even check!