UX Designer Interview Questions: What to Ask and What a Good Answer Contains
A portfolio shows what a designer shipped; the interview should find out how they decided. These questions go through the decisions behind one or two pieces of work, and the way the candidate handles evidence, constraints and disagreement.
- Ask about work the candidate owned, not opinions: every question below asks for a system, a deal, a campaign or a decision that actually happened, with what they did and what came of it.
- Score each answer against the note beside it. The notes describe observable things a strong ux designer answer contains, so two interviewers write down the same evidence and reach the same score.
- Use the scorecard: problem framing; use of research; craft under constraint, and two more. Five criteria, scored 1 to 4, with a sentence of evidence each.
- Ask five questions well rather than eight in a rush. The first one, about something the candidate owned end to end, sets the tone: specifics, not generalities.
- Watch for the red flags listed below, which are patterns rather than single answers: portfolio walkthrough is a tour of screens with no decisions, for one.
The questions
1. Pick one piece of work in your portfolio. What was the problem, how did you know it was the problem, and what did you decide not to do?
What a strong answer contains: A problem stated in user terms, evidence for it (research, data, support), and explicit scope decisions. Look for what was cut and why.
2. Tell me about research that changed your mind.
What a strong answer contains: A specific finding that contradicted an assumption, what the assumption was, and the change in the design. Designers who have never been surprised by users have not talked to enough of them.
3. How do you design for the case where the user makes a mistake?
What a strong answer contains: Prevention first, then recovery: undo, clear errors in plain language, no data loss. An example from their work where the error path was designed, not left over.
4. Show me a design you shipped that you are not happy with. What constraint shaped it?
What a strong answer contains: Honesty about the constraint (time, engineering, a stakeholder, a legacy system), what they preserved, and what they would revisit. A designer with no such design has not shipped much.
5. How do you work with engineers during a build?
What a strong answer contains: Involves them early, hands over decisions not just pictures, stays available for the details that come up, and accepts changes with reasons. An example of a build that went well and why.
6. How do you make an interface accessible from the start rather than at the end?
What a strong answer contains: Contrast, focus order, target sizes, labels, motion, considered in the design tool and checked in the build. Has tested with a keyboard or a screen reader at least once.
7. A stakeholder wants a change you think makes the product worse. What do you do?
What a strong answer contains: Understands what they are trying to achieve, brings evidence or proposes a test, offers an alternative, and accepts the decision if it goes against them. Look for a real example.
8. How do you know whether a design worked after it shipped?
What a strong answer contains: Names a metric or a behaviour they watched, a follow-up they ran, and a change they made from it. Design that ends at handoff is half a job.
Scorecard
Score each 1 to 4 with one line of evidence. A total is less useful than a pattern.
- Problem framing: user terms, evidence, explicit scope
- Use of research: has changed a design because of a finding
- Craft under constraint: error paths and accessibility designed in
- Collaboration: hands engineers decisions, stays present through the build
- Outcome orientation: watches what happened after shipping
Red flags
- Portfolio walkthrough is a tour of screens with no decisions
- Research is something a separate team did
- No design they would change
- Stakeholder disagreements are always won or always lost
How to run the interview
Run the portfolio conversation on one project, in depth, rather than three at a glance. Ask what they knew at the start, what they learned, what they cut and what they would do again. A designer who owned the work can go as deep as you like; a designer who was one of six on it runs out of detail fast.
The mistake-handling and accessibility questions are where craft shows. Ask to see the error state and the keyboard path in their actual work. Many portfolios show only the happy path; the rest of the product is where users spend their worst moments.
If you set an exercise, make it a critique of your product with one proposed change. It is a fair hour of work and it is exactly what the job is on day one.
Frequently asked questions
Should we require a take-home design exercise?
Prefer a paid, short critique of your own product. Multi-day unpaid exercises filter out the designers with the most options and reward the ones with the most free time.
How do we assess visual design separately from UX?
Ask them to critique a screen for visual hierarchy and for usability separately. Some designers are strong at one; decide which you need most before the interview.
What about designers who have only worked in agencies?
Ask what happened after handoff on their projects and how they found out. Agency designers may never have seen the outcome; the questions above will show whether they wanted to.
Related guides
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