What Questions To Ask A Ux Designer In An Interview

How Do We Hire Ux Designers At Cadabra Studio

Typically a design interview process consists of a primary interview with an HR and Art-director. This interview usually is about 60 minutes long. There is a scheme of the interview at Cadabra Studio that we change every 6 months. We do this because some questions aren’t relevant anymore, and others don’t help us make a correct review.

The main goal of all interviews for us is to learn about the candidate as much as possible. Our team doesn’t ask many questions about guidelines, sources of inspiration, etc. We want to see a personality.

All the questions are divided into 3 types:

Then a client makes suggestions about some improvements in the project design. Sometimes, design solutions don’t meet business needs. Therefore, we check whether the designer can explain and justify their design decisions or not.

We don’t give any preliminary tests to candidates because sometimes candidates cheat. The task is to understand how a person thinks and communicates inside the team. And there are 2 ways to check that:

Tasks are given to each candidate individually, so you can’t prepare in advance. During the interview, the HR and Art-director can leave the room to let a candidate concentrate, so they perform better results.

How Important Are Soft Skills In Ux Design

Soft skills are those that allow you to work with others, manage your workflow and improve your work processes. An interviewer may ask this question to assess your soft skills, understand your work personality and preferences and determine your compatibility with other team members. In your answer, reference a few specific soft skills that you possess and how you use them in the workplace. Use the STAR method to describe a situation in which you used your soft skills, the task you had to complete, the actions you took and the results of your efforts.

Example:âNon-tech skills, like communication, time management and empathy are essential in my work as a UX designer. On one project, I used my time management and communication skills to help my team meet an upcoming deadline.“

“The client requested a last-minute change to one of the features, so I collaborated with the project manager to determine how long it would take to implement the change and how it would impact our design timeline. Then, I met with my team to establish smaller goals with a new set of deadlines and split these new responsibilities between team members.

We were able to complete the design with the revision in the same amount of time, which showed the client how dedicated we were to meeting their users needs and being respectful of their time and resources.â

What Theyre Trying To Figure Out: Are You A Culture Fit

Your interviewer wants to get a sense of your working style. Design is a team sport and, as a UX designer, its crucial that you know how to effectively communicate design decisions with the team from the beginning of the project right through to implementation.

Keep in mind that each team member probably sees a given project through different contextual lenses, but you need be able to communicate with all of them to quickly spot any problems or misunderstandings.

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The ability to empathize and understand the motivations of those around you is crucial. Developers, PMs, and other designers will all come with their own particular needs and goals, and if you can demonstrate that youre listening to all of them, youll be well received:

• Developers For effective collaboration with engineers try to understand the technology stack and get a good sense of constraints and opportunities.
• PMs To work well with product managers, remember to translate prototypes into proper specifications, usually in the form of detailed stories.
• Designers Designers typically have continuous cycles of pairing and siloing, followed by structured critique sessions. Having self-awareness about the way you work and demonstrating flexibility is the key to success.

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Top 5 Technical Ux Designer Interview Questions And Answers

Technical questions test your hands-on skills and knowledge of UX design. You will need to thoroughly discuss your experiences, techniques, and design disciplines to answer these questions effectively. Technical questions give the employer an idea of whether or not youre qualified for the job.

Can You Describe Your Design Process?

Every UX designer has processes and methods to follow. In answering this question, youll want to highlight your best techniques, such as avoiding double pop-ups or putting everything on a single screen for web design. There is no wrong answer to this question because every design decision is individual.

What Are Your Thoughts on Universal Design, and Do You Practice It?

Universal design is a practice in UX design in which a product must be usable to the full extent by everyone, or at least by its target audience. This is an inclusive design principle that nearly all UX designers are practicing these days. This is a common question in the design industry because the hiring manager wants to know if your skills are up to date.

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Which One of Our Products Would You Select to Improve, and How Would You Do It?

How Do You Conduct User Research?

Answers To The Most Common Ux Designer Interview Questions

An interview can make or break your chances of getting your dream job, so you must be prepared beforehand. In your UX designer interview, there will be technical, behavioral, and general questions that the interviewer will use to test your skills and knowledge in UX design. Below is a list of UX designer interview questions and how to best answer them.

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What Can You Tell Me About Ux That I Might Not Know

The whole point of hiring a UX design agency is to have someone with exceptional talent and foresight in the UX industry come in with a fresh perspective on what can be improved.

You arent looking for a list of flat solutions you could have Googled for yourself and had a member of your team take care of.

Instead, you want new ideas, innovative thinking and quite frankly, to be wowed by their talent and intuition. Ask them to tell you just one thing about UX solutions that you probably dont know. Bonus points if it relates directly to your business.

What Are Your Three Biggest Strengths

This is the time to toot your own horn. Just make sure your strengths align with what the company is actually looking for!

We recommend preparing for this question in advance by revisiting the job description. For instance, consider this job description for Nextdoor in San Francisco:

As you can see, Nextdoor wants someone who can create highly interactive, delightful, and user-centered experiences. They also want someone who can mentor team members and participate in cross-functional brainstorms, discussion, and design reviews. As such, you could say that your top three strengths are:

If an interviewer asks you about your strengths, you can also assume theyll ask you about your weaknesses.

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Would You Use Another Device For This Product

You can never afford to overlook the importance of the devices on which your product can be used. Be it tablets, smartphones or regular computers it is important to know which one could fit in with your target users.

Aside from a matter of design, the device used for your product can impact how long users are on it, what they do with it and how often they come back.

Whether its on a cell phone, tablet, PC or smartphone, take the opportunity during your user testing to see which devices you can expect users to utilize, and adapt your design accordingly.

How Do You Practice Universal Design

What they really want to know: Are you clued up on inclusive UX? Do you know how to design for ALL users?

Accessibility is a huge topic, so dont be surprised if it comes up in your UX design interview.

As a designer, you have a responsibility to make products and experiences as accessible as possible. This means catering for both temporary, situational constraints and permanent or long-term impairments. When designing an app, for example, how do you ensure a good user experience for visually impaired users? How would you make a video more accessible for users watching it on a noisy, crowded train?

Ultimately, universal design is good for business the more inclusive the product, the wider an audience it can reach. Before your interview, make sure you are clued up on inclusive design and can talk about it in relation to the companys product.

Mikes tip:

Talk about the importance of universal design from a business perspective: why is being accessible to all users a winning strategy for a business or product?

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How Do You Decide Which Features To Use In Your Designs

The interviewer may want to know how you use information to make decisions during the design process. Give examples of how you evaluate features for usability, collaborate with team members and make decisions that lead to successful design features that focus on users’ needs.

Example:âUser research is an important factor that helps me decide which features to integrate into a design. I consider the target market, customer needs and any problems that I might solve through my design. I align these factors with what the company’s goals are so I can create designs that support both the customer and business. In my last company, for instance, I developed more streamlined functions for helping customers search for products and make purchases through my company’s website. With these goals in mind, I decided on fewer graphics and more pathways to search for products.â

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Pay Attention To The Companys Entire Hiring Process

This isnt a question its a practice. Often the best indication of what its like to work at a company is whats not said, simply because its much easier to say youre something than actually be it.

Beyond how interviewers answered your questions, was the interview process smooth and organized? Did the team seem coordinated or were questions repetitive? Did interviewers seemed rushed or impatient to take time out of their busy day? Were they on time to meet you, or were they running behind? Was the white-boarding exercise relevant to the company, or was it akin to one of Googles infamous and now mothballed abstract brainteaser interview questions?

The recruiting and hiring process is complicated, often requiring input and coordination from many individuals across different organizations. Pay attention to how your interviewers conduct themselves its often a good indicator of how the team and company actually functions.

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Why Do You Want To Work For Us

Almost all interviewers want to know why youre interested in working with them. Your answer to this question should be centered on the companys values, mission, and overall purpose.

If its a tech startup, it may make sense to assert that you love the fast pace and innovation they possess. A big corporation? You may want to convey that you appreciate the stability and expertise from their team of seasoned UX designers youve heard so much about.

How Do You Approach A Newly Defined User Problem

Throughout the design processes, you and your professional collaborators test various features and options for designs, so you may discover new problems that need to be addressed before launch. Additionally, problems you and your team members hadn’t found may arise after launch, so you may need to revise or create new features.

Employers may ask this question to gauge how you handle your workflow and quickly manage more urgent tasks. In your answer, explain what your process is of researching an issue and troubleshooting the solution. Focus on your commitment to designing for the best end-user experience.

Example:“Discovery of a new user problem means there are two things to solve for. First, understand the issue and provide a solution. Secondâand this is something teams sometimes overlook because of budget or time constraintsâreexamine the process to see where we might have better anticipated the problem. We may need to revisit our research, review our created user personas, modify our wireframe, or rerun tests and analyses.â

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List Of Ux Design Interview Questions: Behavioral

In a behavioral interview question, employers are looking for a specific example from your past UX experience. By seeing how you reacted to a past situation, they will get a better sense of how you may perform in a similar situation with their company. To successfully answer behavioral interview questions, you should describe the situation, explain the action you took to solve the problem, and share the results or outcome of your action.

Examples of behavioral questions in a UX Designer interview include:

Who In The Industry Do You Follow Or Read

Now, I am personally not one for heroes, but this is a great opportunity to demonstrate your passion for your chosen career. You might be a great UX designer now, but if you are not interested in where the industry is going by following influential people in the field, this could say something about your interest in this job. Employers are looking for people who are not just looking for a 9-5 to pay the bills. They are looking for people who want to invest in becoming the best they can be by being willing to learn all the time. When they ask you who you follow or read in the industry they are really looking for you to show them your excitement for this ever-evolving field. They want you to talk about some of the people you admire and especially who you have learned from in the field of UX design. What UX books have you read recently? Which blogs do you read regularly? Here are a few to get you started but do not stop there! Make some notes of blog posts you were particularly influenced by and talk about them.

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Where Do You Find Inspiration

What theyâre really asking: Are you passionate about UX design? Are you a lifelong learner?

Interviewers are generally looking for a couple of things when they ask a question like this. First, they want to know that youâre genuinely interested in the industry. Second, they want to know that youâre staying on top of trends. Third, they want to see that youâre always looking for ways to learn and improve.

Thereâs no right or wrong answer here.

You could discuss a design book youâve read recently, pointing out a tip or two you gleaned from it. You could talk about a UX podcast you listen to, or a trend you read about in a design blog. How could that trend contribute to this companyâs success? Maybe thereâs a UX designer you follow on Twitter who always inspires you with new ideas.

If youâre not regularly consuming UX design media, nowâs the time to start. Hereâs a list of UX books, blogs, and podcasts to get you going.

Other forms this question might take:

• What do you think is the next big trend in UX design?

• What inspires you?

What Did You Think Of The Layout Of The Content

Asking this user testing question will help your user to reflect on the whole task they just carried out with your product.

This is useful for two reasons. The first is that it will help give you an idea of how they really felt while completing the task if it wasnt evident during the test. The second is that you can later compare each problem and success you recorded with their overall opinion and see if its what you expected.

Maybe everything in your form-filling task went very well, except for two questions. You might expect the user to be happy overall, but perhaps those two problematic elements had a high interaction cost, cancelling out the positive effect of everything else.

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Tips: Acing Your Ux Interview

Besides some of this general advice on how to prepare for an interview, here are some tips specific to UX roles.

• Practice on someone in the design field and someone whoâs not. The person interviewing you may not be a UX designer, so you should be comfortable answering in terms that will still make sense to a non-designer.

• Be ready to share your screen. Whether youâre interviewing in person or online, you may be asked to share your UX design portfolio on your screen. Close any unnecessary windows, and practice navigating to the projects you want to highlight.

• Donât be afraid to stop and think before answering . Talk through your thought process out loudâthis demonstrates your ability to think through problems analytically.

Tell Me About A Time When You Disagreed With Your Teams Recommendation What Did You Do

Data-driven answers are the best type of answers. Remember that. And when you can, talk about using data and proven results to make thoughtful recommendations and business decisions.

In this instance, you should talk about whether the recommendation was based on proven results or completely subjective. If you can, use an example where the recommendation was subjective . As an example, you could say that you disagreed with the teams recommendation because of your user research. Perhaps you had witnessed people interacting with prototypes and saw that they gravitated toward the color blue more often than the color pink. If possible, suggest conducting one more round of usability testing so you can A/B test a pink button against a blue button. Disagreements are better solved with objective data than subjective opinions.

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