Interview Question Guide

Product Designer

Product Designers help companies optimize their products through digital design to create high quality experiences for their users. They do so by leveraging their visual design skills, their understanding of users’ emotional and functional needs, and their knowledge of how products are developed to ensure products have intuitive workflows and are easy to use. Product Designers distill user feedback to build and test new product designs. This requires a deep understanding of the user and an ability to apply that information into the design thinking process. They use design tools to wireframe and prototype their ideas, and they work closely with other teams (e.g., product, web developers) or their clients as they execute their work. Doing so requires them to design solutions that capture the core product objectives and achieve business goals by providing exceptional user experiences.

Core skills for Product Designers

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UX Design

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Interaction Design

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Design Thinking

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Product Development

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Teamwork / Collaboration

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Prototyping

How to interview Product Designers effectively

While it might seem difficult to figure out whether a candidate will succeed as a Product Designer in your company, a well-developed set of interview questions that tap into the core skills required to perform in a Product Designer role will go a long way in helping you decide. 

But where do you start? How do you develop a set of great interview questions? 

The best interview questions come directly from a job analysis. A job analysis is an evidence-based method that focuses on assessing key features of a particular role. These features describe both the job itself (i.e., tasks, responsibilities, and performance objectives), and the characteristics required of someone to perform successfully in the job (e.g., knowledge, skills, and abilities). A job analysis forms the basis of many HR practices such as compensation, performance management, and - you guessed it - how to interview and hire candidates. 

At Hireguide, we’ve done the job analysis work for you. We’ve used the method to identify a core set of skills associated with the Product Designer role, and we’ve developed and validated a list of behavioral and situational questions with answer guides that tap directly into those core skills. And that’s not all. We’ve compiled these questions and created a Product Designer Interview Template for you that integrates other interviewing best practices. Skills-based interviews will not only help you make higher quality and evidence-based hiring decisions, but research also shows they enhance fairness and reduce bias in your hiring process. 

Example interview questions to ask

Question 1

Tell me about the most successful product design project you have participated in. How did you develop your designs in a way to optimize the user experience?

Answer Tips

  • Clearly describes the project and highlights their unique contributions
  • Explains why the UX help made the product successful
  • Speaks to their strengths in UX design and how they facilitated project success
  • Emphasizes the role that design plays for facilitating engagement with products
  • Shares tips and best practices for creating exceptional UX design

Question 2

Talk me through some of the best working experiences you have had with other UX and product designers. What did you do to engage with them that made those experiences so great?

Answer Tips

  • Highlights great communication and open and honest working relationships
  • Understands the professional strengths and weaknesses of other team members
  • Communicates to achieve alignment on objectives/problems they are solving
  • Engages in feedback loops to share and solicit feedback on others' work
  • Shares key takeaways for successful collaboration within design teams

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