How to answer interview questions as a Senior Product Designer?
You've been invited to an interview for the position of senior product designer; now it's time to prepare for success.
Interviews can be intimidating, but they do not have to be if you plan ahead of time. To assist you, I've compiled a list of frequently asked questions for senior product designers during interviews. I also included some tips on how to answer them, so you can go into your interview feeling confident and ready to impress!
My favorite product design interview questions
Here are some of my favorite product designer interview questions to ask to gain a deeper understanding of your candidates and answers that candidates can consider when interviewing.
What’s an example of a user experience that you think is broken?
A passionate product designer shouldn't have to ponder this; if they care about user experience, they'll have an answer ready.
Make them critique the experience from various perspectives, and then ask them to speculate on how it came to be that way.
How to answer it?
Consider any product or service that you use daily. It could be your design tool, notes app, todo app, or something else.
Where do you come across problems that you'd be happy to fix? What is it about this product or service that you dislike? What features do you believe are lacking that you would benefit from?
Can you give an example of something recent that inspired you?
This is essentially the inverse of the previous question, allowing the candidate to discuss a user experience — or a single aspect of one — that they find brilliant.
You can then ask them if and how they applied that inspiration to a project they were working on. Questioning candidates to "provide an example of a time when..." is another excellent way to assess their introspection and willingness to discuss times when things didn't go as planned.
How to answer it?
Senior product designers get inspired not only by other designers' work but by everything else that surrounds them. When answering this question, think of something not related to design that you can use as an inspiration for your work.
It could be nature, a book, a movie, or a person. Additionally, you can consider other industries, such as architecture, cars, spaceships, travel, etc.
What type of work or project do you not enjoy doing?
When you're interviewing, it's easy to talk about your hobbies. Discussing topics you'd rather not discuss (while remaining professional) is a little more difficult.
Candidates don't want to appear sluggish or picky, but how someone talks about less-than-exciting work can be informative. Although the interview's outcome is unlikely to be determined by this response, knowing what types of projects a candidate isn't interested in allows you to assess how they might fit into your team.
How to answer it?
If you enjoy product design, there are numerous opportunities available to you. Product design requires a wide range of skills, and while you can be good at most of them, there's probably something specific that you don't enjoy doing.
To answer this question, describe your least favorite part of the product design process. I know that I'm not a big fan of running workshops (while it's a necessary part of the process), so I mention that and get support from people who love doing it.
Showing your weaknesses is not a weakness. Instead, it allows you to focus on doing something you enjoy and are good at.
How do you know when you’ve gotten a design right?
Answering this question allows the candidate to demonstrate how they analyze and measure user experiences. Not knowing the answer to this question is probably a bad sign, as it indicates a practice of launching product experiences and never checking in to see how they're being used.
Furthermore, the candidate can mention the tools and software they use to measure and monitor their designs. This is an excellent place to look more deeply into the types of metrics they typically seek, which leads you to the next question.
How to answer it?
It’s always hard to judge your work. Often, designers fall in love with their work and cannot objectively look at it and analyze it.
One of the best criteria for the "right" design is having a problem solved. After you're done with your work, talk to the stakeholders and users, and look at the data.
Seeing people doing their work faster, more effectively, and efficiently is a sign that you've got it right.
Describe a time when you’ve used data to solve a problem
In any role, but especially in product design, the ability to demonstrate data-driven decision-making is critical.
This question should ideally prompt the candidate to discuss a time when they noticed some type of user friction and then propose a change to make the experience smoother.
How to answer it?
Designing using data is a highly critical skill for product designers. When making product decisions, you can’t only rely on the trends, best practices, and your gut feeling. You need data to back it up.
For example, you might have noticed that an element on the login page of your invoicing software is causing a frustrating user experience. You can build a case that this issue should be fixed by combining the qualitative data to provoke user empathy with metrics that quantify how many users are having this frustrating experience.
In Tools to test your design and get feedback, I reviewed a few tools that offer multiple features, including analytics and collaboration, that enable reviewers to leave precise feedback directly on the design.
How have you worked closely with developers?
Understanding a candidate's perspective on cross-team collaboration is important from both an efficiency and a cultural standpoint.
This helps you understand how the candidate approaches and navigates design tradeoffs.
How to answer it?
Product design is only part of the process. As a senior product designer, you must communicate your designs and ideas to developers so that they build the product the way you designed it.
You can tell about your experience working with developers. Maybe there was a time when you pushed engineering constraints to get something done. Or maybe there was an example of a time when you had to give up something you valued because of those constraints.
Have them walk you through a key project in their portfolio
And ask “why” about everything. By asking a candidate to explain why they made each minor decision on a project, you can gain insight into their thinking.
This exercise can provide you with an infinite amount of insight.
How to answer it?
Presenting design work can be tough – there’s so much you can discuss. When walking through a project, don’t forget to talk about business goals, users, your role, your process, your contributions to the team effort, and more:
Were your decisions based on data, experience, or intuition?
What was the point of starting the project in the first place?
What made it so important to the company?
What effect did it have on the users?
Why did you choose to work on this particular project?
What lessons did you learn, and what would you do differently now?
What’s your dream tech stack?
Every product designer prefers a different set of tools, ranging from project management tools like JIRA to use survey tools like Userback.
However, asking your candidate about the components of their tech stack can demonstrate their interest in—and ability to—push the boundaries of their role.
How to answer it?
Designers nowadays have plenty of tools to choose from. To answer this question, tell about your favorite software for each project step:
Research
User interviews
Brainstorming
Wireframing
UI design
Prototyping
User testing, etc.
Don't forget to mention the tools outside of the primary work: your project/task manager or collaborative documents/notes that you use to keep the information about the project in one central place across the team.
It's good to mention how you use all these tools together. Are there any integrations that help speed up/automate certain workflows? Maybe you're using any of the no-code/low-code tools to make prototypes more realistic?
Conclusion
It is remarkably hard to find the right people. I hope you'll find this article valuable if you're currently hiring or if you're a candidate looking for a product designer job.