At this point, you've managed to complete your portfolio. The countless hours you've spent on applications, networking calls, and outreach has finally paid off: you've landed a design interview.
Now comes the hard part: actually answering interview questions. Where to even begin?
While there’s no standard list of questions asked of every designer, there are typical categories and areas that most companies want to cover during the interview process. By thinking through the steps of an interview and the people you might be meeting with, you can start to get an idea of how to answer your UX interview questions and earn yourself a new job in an exciting field.
Design Interview Questions By Topic
Each company has a different hiring process. Some might request multiple rounds of interviews with various team members. Others might do more skills-based testing upfront to identify top candidates before moving into scheduling reviews.
In either case, it's important to be aware that there are various aspects that interviewers are looking for, including:
- How well you understand and fit into company values and culture.
- Your level of technical skills and abilities, as pertains to the job description.
- Your design process, and how you've utilized it during past projects.
- How well you incorporate feedback and collaboration into your design work.
Here are a few questions that you might encounter as you go through your interview process in real life.
9 Common UX Design Interview Questions
1. “Tell us about yourself.”
This question isn't unique to the UX design interview process. However, it is your opportunity to really explain your journey into the field of UX design, and how you view your career as a whole.
What they're looking for:
When a recruiter or hiring manager asks this question, they are not looking for a 10 minute backstory starting in elementary school, but they do expect more than, “I’m a designer looking for my next role.”
Designlab mentor, Becky Hancock, says:
I'm just more interested in learning about them as a person and a bit of their personality at first, especially in regards to junior designer positions.
Tips for answering this question:
Take the time to connect the dots for the interviewer and communicate that your decision to move from your past career(s) into UX designwas an intentional process and that you’re committed to this new path.
If you have a background in customer service or hospitality, for example, you could emphasize your experience in listening to the likes and dislikes of customers, and how this experience inspired you to seek out a career where you would be in a position to fix that product or service.
If you have a design-adjacent background—like engineering, marketing, or architecture—you could explain that working with designers made you realize that you wanted to play a bigger role in the creative aspect of problem solving, and therefore took the initiative to pivot into UX design.
2. “Why did you apply for this role?"
This is a question that dives deeper into what you're looking for in your career—both short and long term.
What they're looking for:
The interviewer is looking for some sense of your passion and self-awareness. They want to know the reasons why this specific role resonates with you to get a better feel of whether your interests and goals align with theirs.
Tips for answering this question:
This is your chance to show how well you understand the job description, and how much research you've done into the company itself.
You might mention company culture, the UX you've observed on the website or product, or even how you view this role as fitting into your UX design career path as a whole.
3. “Walk me through your design process”
UX design is more than just attractive visuals, soyour interviewer wants to make sure you understand and can explain how you got to the screens they see in your final project.
While there are seldom completely wrong answers to many interview questions, it’s very important to go beyond sharing the tools you use or the number of tasks in your general workflow.
What they're looking for:
The interviewer wants to know your thought process and how you analyze the problem at hand. They want to know that you have a clear design process that works for UX/UI design and can speak to how you've utilized that process on projects.
There isn’t a universal standard for a UX design process, but you should be able to show your understanding of how to get from point A to point B, and explain it to another designer or cross functional team member.
Tips for answering this question:
Some general best practices for explaining your UX design process:
- Draw on examples from your design portfolio using case studies, user flows, and wireframes to illustrate your story.
- Include details on research and usability testing.
- Make sure to do your research on the people you’ll be speaking with, the role, and the company beforehand, so you can pick the most relevant examples that will resonate with your audience.
4. "Can you give us an example of a time that you had to give someone difficult feedback?"
Collaboration and communication lie at the heart of any design project. This question is often phrased with a follow up question: "What was the end result?"
What they're looking for:
With this interview question, the interviewer wants to know that you clearly understand how to navigate providing difficult feedback ... and that you can accomplish this with grace, humility, and care.
Tips for answering this question:
You might choose from any number of scenarios when answering this question, but typically it's best to talk about a situation that occurred in a day to day work environment. Make sure you clearly address the heart of the question in your answer, and provide your nuanced perspective on criticism, as well as how to convey empathy through all interactions.
A strong answer will also go into some overview of what the end result was. Was the feedback received well? Were there any follow up steps that you took? When looking back, what lessons did you learn from this particular interaction?
5. "Tell me about a time you received feedback from a colleague that was difficult to hear. "
Question #4 was focused on how you address issues and communicate feedback. This one is all about how you view and respond to criticism of your work.
What they're looking for:
Ideally, the interviewer wants to see that you view feedback as constructive and that you appreciate getting it. They want you to explain how you understood then acted on the feedback, and how you used it to make a positive change in their work.
Tips for answering this question:
When answering this question, try to give a full context of what the feedback was and what you did with it.
It can also be a good idea to share details like who gave the feedback, and how you felt when you received it.
One of the more candid responses to this question is a quick acknowledgement that, in the world of design, critical feedback is a daily occurrence and a necessity. If you choose to share an example of design feedback, you might also want to share your view of how critique works in the design process as a whole.
6. "Have you ever worked with a developer/product manager/etc?”
A seasoned UX designer can take this question and provide a straightforward answer. But even if you don't have any experience working with a full product design team before, you can still give a strong response, since this question goes much deeper than the job titles of your collaborators.
What they're looking for:
What interviewers want to know with a question like this is whether you’ve worked with others to accomplish shared goals.
Tips for answering this question:
Most UX design work involves collaboration and considering the perspectives of other teams. It’s obvious that, as a career switcher, you might not have directly translatable experience, but you should try to answer the question in a more nuanced way. For many career switchers, the short answer to this question will be no, you haven’t worked with developers or product managers yet. Instead of stopping there, you can add to your answer and emphasize any team relationships you’ve had in the past.
For example, if you worked as an account manager in a PR or advertising agency, you could talk about how you worked with strategists or production teams to make sure everyone understood the client’s requests and were in agreement on the deliverables and timelines. If you’re a former teacher, you could reference a time where you had to collaborate with colleagues to make sure your lessons were meeting district standards.
You should also do your research on how designers, developers, and product managers work together. Who manages what, how do handoffs work, and what questions do you need to be prepared to answer as a designer? This knowledge will enable you to ask intelligent questions on their team process, even if you don’t have much to compare it to just yet.
7. “How did you measure success on X project?”
This can be a tough one for those just starting out in UX design, since much of your work will be theoretical problems associated with assigned case studies or topics. If you’re in an interview and the hiring manager asks this question, they’ve already seen your portfolio and are aware that the work isn’t client facing.
What they're looking for:
What they want to hear is how you would measure success if it were a “real” project. How would you know what you designed is actually working? What metrics would you look for?
The answers you give should be nuanced to fit the job description that you're currently interviewing for.
A marketing UX designer, for example, might speak to A/B testing or SEO performance on a landing page design.
A product UX designer, on the other hand, might acknowledge customer retention or other product success metrics.
Tips for answering this question:
If you haven’t done it yet, be honest and explain what you would—hypothetically—do using examples from your case studies.
To answer this question, you need to understand how to measure your work to begin with. Even being able to say, “I read about this method for qualitative measurement and I would use it in this particular project for the following reasons,” tells the interviewer that you know that metrics are important and your designs will be evaluated for more than just their visual impact.
8. “What’s your favorite product and why?”
What you choose to talk about in this question says a lot about where you look for design inspiration, and how you identify successful UX design.
If you’re applying to a company that only works with apps, or is in a niche industry, you may want to have an answer that relates to their business. You also want to explain your answer using specific examples from a UX designer’s perspective.
In other words: it’s not enough to list out your top apps or websites; you should also have an opinion on what makes it great.
On the flip side, you may get a question asking what’s your least favorite product and why, or to tell them about a product that was frustrating to use and why. The interviewer is looking for the same critical thinking from a UX perspective, and your answer shows that you won’t make the same mistake in your designs.
What they're looking for:
Josie Ng, Senior Product Designer at Neat, and Designlab mentor, likes to ask candidates to tell her about their favorite product and why. She says that, based on their answers, “it really tells me how the candidate thinks, what type of experience/product they like, and how they view customer experience.”
Tips for answering this question:
While there's no specific right or wrong answer, you should have something prepared. A UX designer who can’t answer this question poses a red flag for many hiring managers.
The answer you provide should be aligned with the personal brand that you've developed through your portfolio, and should include some context into why you've chosen that particular product to share in this interview.
In a job interview for a UI design position, for example, you might choose an app that appeals to you for standout user flows and stunning visual design elements. In a more user research focused interview, however, you might speak instead to your favorite product with strong user centered design.
9. "What design product are you particularly proud of?"
The interviewer has already seen your portfolio. Now, they want to know which is your favorite project ... and why.
What they're looking for:
They want to see you communicate a sense of excitement around the project, as well as clearly speak to its challenges, how they were overcome, and the end result.
In short: they want to hear the story of the project from your perspective.
Tips for answering this question:
Great answers go above and beyond a simple "Project X was my favorite because I feel it showcases my design skills the best."
Reflect on a project that goes beyond a textbook definition of UX design and process, and share how that stands out as a piece of UX design work you're most proud of.
If you worked on a pro bono project, for example, you might share the story of how you really enjoyed contributing to a meaningful product for personal reasons. Or, you might choose a project that was particularly challenging to work on—one where business goals were misaligned with user centric principles.
Whatever you choose, it's important to clearly articulate the why, and know that the story you tell will reflect on your perspective of design as a whole.
Conclusion
These are just a few of the many interview questions you’ll encounter when interviewing for UX design, UX/UI design, or product design positions.
It’s good to practice your answers with a mentor, advisor, friends or family, or even record yourself and play it back. The more you practice, the more comfortable you’ll be when it’s time for the real deal.
Keep in mind that most interviewers really want you to succeed during an interview. They’re making the hire because they need a new team member, and they’re hopeful that you’ll be the right fit.
So try to think of these questions as more of a conversation between potential colleagues rather than an interrogation, and get excited about your first job as a UX designer!
To learn more about landing your first job in the UX/UI design industry from design career pros, explore our UX Academy program—which includes up to 6 months of Career Services. You’ll be paired with a Career Coach to identify the right job opportunities, add extra polish to your portfolio, work on your interview skills, and launch your new career!
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