Product Designer Skills Interview
Author:
Alycia Damp, PhD IRHRA Product Designer interview assessing key skills required for success. We've also included a few motivation and values questions to help you make the best decisions about your candidates.
Focus area:
Question
1
Why are you interested in making a career move to our company as Product Designer? How do you see this opportunity within the context of your career?
What does this question reveal?
Design Product Designer Skills Interview Product Designer 85 min 9 skills 17 questions TH Team Hireguide Created on 09/09/2022 Design User Experience Designer Skills Interview User Experience Designer 85 min 9 skills 17 questions AD Alycia Damp Created on 05/27/2022 Design Graphic/Visual Designer Skills Interview Graphic/Visual Designer 40 min 4 skills 8 questions O@ Opportunity @ Work Created on 12/23/2022 Design Product Designer Skills Interview Product Designer 40 min 4 skills 8 questions RP Rachel Policastro Created on 09/09/2022 BETA Product Designer Product Designer Skills Interview 85 min Skills-based 17 questions A Product Designer interview assessing key skills required for success. We've also included a few motivation and values questions to help you make the best decisions about your candidates. Focus area: UX Design Teamwork/Collaboration Motivation Culture Fit Design Thinking Product Development Prototyping Interaction Design Introduction and Conclusion Question 1 Introduction and Conclusion 5 min Suggestions for how to start your interview What does this question reveal? Explore tips Welcome the candidate and introduce yourself, your role, and the team Describe the focus of the interview (e.g., skills, values, motivations) Explain you're using structured interviews (all candidates asked same questions) Tell candidate about Hireguide Notetaker joining the interview Advise candidates on your desired length of their responses (2-5 mins) see less Question 2 Motivation 5 min Why are you interested in making a career move to our company as Product Designer? How do you see this opportunity within the context of your career? What does this question reveal? Candidate
Explore tips
- Is seeking an opportunity to grow by applying and developing multiple skills
- Wants to make a defined impact on others and the organization’s success
- Is motivated to add value to the company's culture and work environment
- Is passionate when discussing how this connects with their strengths/interests
- Exhibits awareness of the role expectations and the organizational context
Question
2
Tell me about a product you've used that has an outstanding user experience. What makes it so great?
What does this question reveal?
Candidate has the ability to analyze UX and understand the criteria for a good user experience
Explore tips
- Shows an awareness of the criteria that make a UX successful
- Identifies which elements of the product/app/website are done well
- Discusses key UX principles (usability, consistency, flexibility, etc.)
- Emphasizes the balance of user engagement and product purpose
- Connects UX to the success of the company or its business objectives
Question
3
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?
What does this question reveal?
Candidate has the ability to analyze and produce design content that centers around the user experience
Explore 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
4
When it comes to design thinking, where do you see others getting it wrong? How would you coach them to improve?
What does this question reveal?
Candidate has the ability to understand and apply the key principles of high quality design thinking
Explore tips
- Highlights design thinking elements (empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test)
- Conveys a valid understanding of errors one can make when using design thinking
- Suggests tools that can help someone improve their design thinking skills
- Suggests ways to identify performance improvements
- Highlights specific resources or exercises that hone design thinking skills
Question
5
How would you create user personas for our company?
What does this question reveal?
Candidate has the ability to apply design thinking process to create personas
Explore tips
- Engages in design thinking to create personas (empathize, ideate, define, test)
- Collects user information to understand motivations, behavior, mindset
- Analyzes user information and identify behavioural patterns to create personas
- Creates scenarios to understand user flow
- Creates detailed personas by considering many aspects of their character profile
Question
6
Imagine you and a product manager disagree on the placement of a certain feature on the website/app/product. What would you do in this scenario?
What does this question reveal?
Candidate has the ability to work effectively with the product team on task interdependencies
Explore tips
- Utilizes UX expertise to explain their preference for the placement of a feature
- Asks questions to understand the product manager's reason for the placement
- Clarifies objectives of the website/app/product and how feature achieves them
- Understands the PM might be motivated by business versus user objectives
- Ensures the conversation ends with a decision on how to move forward
Question
7
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?
What does this question reveal?
Candidate has the ability to build successful and collaborative relationships with core team members
Explore 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
Question
8
Imagine a product success metric is far off from what was expected. As a designer, how would you suggest collaborating with product and engineering teams to solve for this problem in the next development cycle?
What does this question reveal?
Candidate has the ability to understand team interdependencies in product development
Explore tips
- Discusses structured process for developing and communicating a plan
- Ensures all teams are aligned on understanding the source of the lagging metrics
- Suggests designers build user flows to discuss before any product testing
- Communicates implications for work cycles, front-end, and back-end development
- Shares any best practices based on previous learnings/experience
Question
9
Tell me about a time where you were working on a design team and experienced inefficiencies in how the product development process was organized. What would you have done to make the process more efficient?
What does this question reveal?
Candidate has the ability to identify opportunities to improve work processes in product development
Explore tips
- Explains work context and identifies source of inefficiencies
- Considers interdepencies between product, eng, and design workflows
- Suggests design can share user flows early for eng to build/experiment with
- Encourages ideation and testing in the design phase of development (versus eng)
- Shares tactics for streamlining team communication in development cycles
Question
10
Imagine you are given an extensive list of specifications to prototype. With so much information, which key factors do you need to consider before you start creating your prototype?
What does this question reveal?
Candidate has the ability to apply a structured approach to develop prototypes from complex requests
Explore tips
- Defines and confirms the goal of the project (e.g. communication tool, testing)
- Identifies the key features/journey that will create the most value
- Communicate with client to clarify expectations for deliverable
- Understands their audience/who the prototype is being created for
- Identify what to prioritize and prioritize based on prototype objectives
Question
11
In the design development process, when might you skip the wireframe and go directly into the prototype? What are the advantages or disadvantages in doing so?
What does this question reveal?
Candidate understands the value of wireframing and prototyping in the design development
Explore tips
- Acknowledges the importance of wireframing in developing a product
- Considers prototyping when the user interactions are too complex
- Discusses wireframing advantages (inexpensive, quick to complete and iterate)
- Elaborates on how wireframing lowers the likelihood of finding errors and redesigning
- Acknowledges wireframing has limitations with unique and complex interfaces
Question
12
Imagine you are designing a mobile app for a retail store. At the checkout page, would you use a click or a swipe for placing an order? Why?
What does this question reveal?
Candidate has the ability to understand implications of user actions in interaction design
Explore tips
- Suggests either clicking or swiping and justifies claims
- Provides examples from other companies that use a click versus a swipe
- Highlights that swiping is a fast, intuitive, and natural for users
- Explains most users like to navigate mobile apps with one finger (i.e. thumb)
- Notes clicking allows users more time to think before placing an order
Question
13
Imagine you're working on redesigning an interactive feature that currently has complex and confusing navigation components. How would you approach this task and streamline the navigation elements for a seamless user journey?
What does this question reveal?
Candidate displays proficiency in building effective navigation elements in interaction designs
Explore tips
- Clarifies the key objectives for the page and user journey with stakeholders
- Considers new navigation menus with content/feature categories
- Considers breadcrumbs as a navigation aid to help the user navigate effectively
- Suggests using location indicators or pushpins to design a seamless user journey
- Shares any examples of past experience to justify claims or share learnings
Question
14
Based on your past work history and professional experience, in what type of work environment were you the happiest and most productive?
What does this question reveal?
Candidate shares preferences for organizational culture and workstyle aligned with your company
Explore tips
- Discusses attributes that align with your organization
- References different organizational factors (people, place, work, etc.)
- Highlights the values that shaped the environment/culture
- Shares a story from past experience to support their claims
- Justifies why it made them happy and productive
Question
15
What is one thing you wish I had asked you in our conversation today?
What does this question reveal?
Candidate displays self-awareness of unique strengths and value-add
Explore tips
- Gives a response that is relevant to the role in question
- Justifies their suggestion by explaining their value-add
- Exhibits strengths that were not previously covered
- Further demonstrates their value-add and competitiveness as a candidate
