Design interviews could actually be interesting

Design interview questions that test problem-solving, not tool proficiency

I recently wrote about design interview questions and how the proactive designer should first respond with questions, rather than just start drawing rectangles. I also addressed why doing fake design projects is a bad idea.

Creative problem solving

Here are some ideas for design interview questions which should spark candidate's creative thinking, and get them out of their comfort zone of drawing with mouse or prompts; they are tool-agnostic, focused on understanding, problem solving and thinking process, rather than on pure decoration:

  • Design the interaction for navigating the map on a smartwatch. The constraint is that only two physical buttons are available on the smartwatch for desired task, and there is no touchscreen.
  • Design a conversation flow for booking the hospital appointment for use with a voice chatbot. The target users are elderly people, not familiar with technology, who are expected to anthropomorphise the chatbot.
  • Design space-efficient packaging for the desk components, and step-by-step user manual for assembly the work desk. The expectation is that users are not familiar with manual assembly, and that components should be taken out of the packaging in the certain order

These are really real world design examples. Now the designer counter-argument would be: "I will never face those kind of tasks in my career!" - but we quickly realize this commentary is irrelevant.

The point of these exercises is to understand candidate's thinking process and creative problem solving, which is actually what design is all about.

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