Crack UX Design Interview: Most Asked UX Design Questions, Tips and Tricks

Planning to change your career or land a job as a UX Designer? We got you sorted. The field of UX design is flourishing. If you’ve been considering applying for a position as a UX designer at any company/agency, you should take some time to get ready for the interview. There is a lot of preparation that goes into preparing for a design interview. You need to get ready with your portfolio and resume to share with the company before actually getting into the interviews. 

There might be times when a question on the surface, seemingly straightforward may tell a lot about you as a UX designer. We know that interviews can be very nerve-wracking sometimes, especially when you’re new to the field. So in this article, we’ve put up a list of the most commonly asked UX designer interview questions and how to respond to them to ace your interview. 

Top 5 Categories of the Questions Asked in a UX Design Interview

There are some categories under which each type of question falls, a good mix of questions from each category checks the all over knowledge, behavior, approach, and whether you’ll be fit for team and company culture. These categories are:

• Questions related to YOU: Including your personal life(introduction sort of), what you enjoy doing, your hobbies, and who you are as a person.
• Questions related to YOUR WORK: Including your work experience, what you have been doing, What projects you have worked on and what was your experience with your last employer.
• Questions related to YOUR WORK APPROACH/PROCESS: Including questions around your design process, how you think through a problem, what considerations you take into account while ideating, How would incorporate feedback and pass feedback etc.
• Questions related to What makes you take a Pause/Tick: Including situational and behavioral questions around how would you handle feedback, your strengths, and weaknesses, what makes you pause while working to regain focus, etc
• Questions related to YOUR Expectations and Goals: Including what you expect from this job, what is something you are looking for, your aspirations, and what you want to learn and gain in this role. Also what you would bring to the team and how would you contribute to the company’s growth?

Now let’s look into the actual question that falls under above mentioned categories, ready to dive in!

Category A: Questions Related to You

1. Tell us about YOURSELF.

One of the most asked questions among the first one or 2 rounds of interviews typically. This question seems very simple and an easy target but tells a lot about you as a person and how you are as a designer.

The intent of asking this question is to know “What makes you the right fit for this position?”

Take this question as an opportunity to share and explain your journey into UX design, and how and why you choose to be a UX Designer. Answering in such a way would help the interviewer get a clear picture of you.

2. How to answer if you are a Fresher and don’t have prior experience in the field?

For a fresher, it can be a bit overwhelming to come up with a planned answer and sometimes one is not able to gather words to share their experience in the field so far. If you have never worked as a UX designer before, that’s okay. Consider the UX design process, and learning you may have utilized through practicing and relate them to this. 
Additionally, here is a great opportunity for you to describe what appeals to you about the position you’re applying for, and your qualifications for the position.

3. What can be similar questions for the same purpose?

• Tell us about your journey in UX
• How you ended up with UX design
• What is your daily life look like
• Tell us about your background

4. What are your Top Three Strengths and Weaknesses?

These types of questions are behavioral and test your behavior, to see if you’ll be the right fit for the culture. More than just answering, you have to use the right words and align them such that even weaknesses seem to be a good use. 

The intent of asking this question is to know “Would you be the potential fit to company culture, what you potential of and what skills need to be brush up”

5. For strength points are mindful of what the interviewer wants to know – He/She expects someone who would

• Could create interactive, useful, and amazing user-centric designs.
• One who could mentor, motivate, and guide other team members
• One who would be a team player
• Have excellent communication and collaboration skills 

6. For weakness, telling your weak points seems risky. So try to frame the weakness as a positive weakness, you could mention like

• “I heard from my colleagues that I share extra information when explaining designs” – This would show you have answers to questions and always make sure the information doesn’t lag from your end.
• “I feel bored, when not working on a challenging task” – This shows you’re always keen to talk up something out of your comfort zone.

Category B: Questions Related to Your Work

1. What is UX Design and Its Value?

This a question to purposefully know what you know about UX and the field. If you are getting into the interviews be assured of getting this question in any of the rounds. Everyone has their understanding of the concept and that is what is wanted to know by the interviewer.

The intent of asking this question is to know “Do you understand about ux designs as a field and how you feel about the field, its importance basically”

Don’t just rely on the textbook or Google definition to suffice the interview. You can mold the definition into your understanding of the concept. Always remember sketches and wireframes are just the beginning of what goes into UX design; it’s not just about making things seem nice. Make sure to distinguish between the two in your response; it’s all about the user.

2. How to answer if you are a Fresher and Don’t Have Prior Experience in the Field?

As a fresher try to highlight what you have learned and felt from UX as a field. Put enough emphasis on the value of user-centricity and empathy which are the core values of UX design. Why is a user-first strategy so important, and how does it contribute to a successful business? Talk about UX approaches and laws that bring a lot of changes to the industry. Discuss usability testing, customer journeys, and user research. Demonstrate your knowledge of the importance of UX design to users, businesses, and society at large. 
This is also a wonderful chance for you to showcase a case study from your portfolio that exemplifies how well you understand user experience.

3. What can be similar questions for the same purpose?

• What is UX Design to you?
• Define UX.
• What is the importance of UX design?
• Why are UX designers hired? 
• What UX designer bring to the company?

4. How do you hand over work to a cross-functional team?

The intent of asking this question is to know “What is your behavior towards collaboration with cross-functional team members, how you deliver work”

Utilize this chance to show your keenness to be collaborative with other cross-functional teams like product and engineering. The objective is to demonstrate that you’re comfortable approving a project and have faith that it’s safe with the developer. Properly answering this would show you build a good rapport with engineers and product managers while working with them as a team.  Try to give instances of your current example on a project you delivered work that saved some time for devs to understand, talk about how you make sure everything is easy for other teams to understand and locate in the design file.

Category C: Questions Related to Your Work Approach/Process

1. What are Different Design Principles?

Mention different design disciplines such as Graphics design, UX Design, UI Design, and Product Design. The interviewer wants to see that you’re clear with all different disciplines and are more concerned with the user and making things usable than they are with making them beautiful as a UX Designer.

The intent of asking this question is to know “Do you understand about different design disciplines, know about the elements of good UX design and also whether you know your responsibilities as well as priorities as a UX designer.”

When answering this question, portray a clear understanding of the value of good UX and having good UX design skills. Talk about what features of the product, application, or website contribute to a pleasurable user experience. How user-centric is the design? What effect do you think that has on the business’s bottom line?

2. How to answer if you are a Fresher and Don’t Have Prior Experience in the Field?

As a fresher to ace this question, give examples of each design discipline. Explain what work a graphics designer, UX designer, and UI designer does. Discuss the responsibility of each and what you say in the UX design field. Share what inspires you to be a UX designer. Share some of your preferred design Twitter handles, YouTube videos, and articles or blogs. You might also include a few conferences you’ve been to, publications you’ve subscribed to, or books you’ve read. If you aren’t already following any blogs, you should start. 

3. What can be similar questions for the same purpose?

• What inspires you to be a UX designer?
• How would you design UX design?

4. Walkthrough of Your Design Process

The interviewer will be particularly interested in how you approach problem-solving and how design thinking informs your business practices. As a result, they might ask you to describe your typical UX workflow. Problem-solving is at the very heart of UX design, which is a very diverse and practical profession. 

When you show an interviewer your portfolio, and while going through any of your projects, you should walk him through your process.
Explain your approach through a real-life example rather than providing a fictional method for a hypothetical project (you can bring out your portfolio again or you can just talk him through it).

The intent of asking this question is to know “How you think through a problem, what process you follow while solving a problem.”

There are many frameworks and approaches you can refer to while explaining your process if you are asked about some of them. Don’t forget to mention your research, design, and validation processes; this will help your answer look structured similarly to the design process itself. Refrain from answering this question in a generalized manner. Also, add any situation challenges or critical use cases that got you to tick, and how you overcame them.

5. How to answer if you are a Fresher and Don’t Have Prior Experience in the Field?

To answer this question as a fresher, present how you ensure that you are always designing for the user when you walk someone through your process. It’s crucial to emphasize that you are aware of and can adjust to the fact that various settings call for various tactics.

6. What can be similar questions for the same purpose?

• What is your Design Process like?
• What do you carry out with the final solution?
• What challenges did you face during this project and how you worked it out?

Category D: Questions related to What Makes You Take a Pause/Tick?

1. How do you handle “Negative Feedback”?

To talk about this implies that you are receptive to all forms of criticism as it advances your growth and learning as a UX designer. Possibly share a few instances where you had to deal with negative feedback, what was your take on it?

The intent of asking this question is to know “What is your behavior towards feedbacks, how you deal with them”

There are situations where either a product person or even a senior person is completely unaligned on your work, use this chance to discuss productive collaboration where you ace this by considering it as constructive feedback. It is not necessary that it needs to be your efforts, this might have been a team effort on a project or in a prior job. 

2. Share some good examples and, don’t forget to highlight your contribution to the team

How you overcame many obstacles, what you took away from your teammates, and how teamwork improved the final result.

Category E: Questions related to YOUR Expectations and Goals?

1. What are Your Goals for the Next 3-5 Years?

Through this question, they want to see what are your plans for the next few years, and where you want to be in the company(or whether you would stick to the company or not). Planning for the future can be difficult. Even if you are unsure of your five-year goals, at least give the interviewer a general concept.

The intent of asking this question is to know “To have some idea about your next move, aspiration and plans for the coming years.”

To ace, the question, talk about what your professional path looks like. Do you aspire to become an authority in a specific area of UX? If so, discuss it along with how this job will help you get there. Share your next move, where you want to reach, and how you would reach there. Discussing all this would create a good rapport with your interviewers, they would see an honest and goal-oriented person.

2. What can be similar questions for the same purpose?

• What inspired you to be a UX designer?
• Where do you want to be in the next 5 years?
• What excited you as a designer?
• Do you like to be a team leader and have complete authority on a project?
• How do you manage work as a UX designer?

So these were the questions, and approach to answering them. However, the interview is not yet complete. Once all the questions are done from the interviewer’s side they would give you the chance to ask questions as well. 

Not only a UX design interview question, this is a typical interview closing statement. Use this time and opportunity to clear out any doubts, and queries you have. I would suggest preparing a good mix of questions you want to know related to team, work, and company.
It demonstrates that you were attentive and involved during the interview. Once more, curiosity is expected of UX designers. Show some interest in the questions, don’t let the interviewer probably assume you aren’t interested in the job if you leave the room without posing any questions.

Sharing a Bunch of Questions that You Could Pose to the Interviewer

• Can you describe a typical workday for a UX designer in your team?
• How would you describe an ideal candidate for this role? 
• What qualities are you primarily looking for in a designer for this role?
• What do you have to say about the company’s culture and work-life balance?
• What are learning opportunities and mentorship that are taken care of for individuals?
• Are there any mentorship courses, events, or activities provided by the company for individual growth?
• What design process does your team follow? Or do you have any specific design process that you follow?
• How would my performance be evaluated for this role?
• What does the career path look like for this role?
• Can you share any latest project or task your team has worked on?
• What are the next rounds in the hiring process?
• Do you have any feedback to share about this round or anything specific you want to share about our conversation?

Tips to Ace Your Design Interview

• Always prepare well before heading toward any round of interviews.
• Before applying to any role, carefully read the job description to check whether it aligns with your skills and whether would you be able to take up the responsibility.
• Do your homework about the role, and company, and take notes on things you want to discuss or clarify with the interviewer.
• No matter who is in the interview(from the design team or not), try to pose answers in a way that is comforting to all. Explain and communicate everything such that it is clear to them.
• Don’t be afraid of sharing your projects, and screen when talking about any work. This would help them understand visually and verbally what you’re saying.
• Ask questions and clarify your doubts related to work and company if any, and don’t let the chance go spare.

Conclusion

This is all you need to be very well prepared for most UX design interview questions and tips to prepare before applying for a job and while going for an interview. We have clubbed all the categories, types of questions, and tips to give a heads-up to your confidence. So it’s a wrap for this article, hope this will help you ace your design interviews.