UI/UX CoP: [2024-11-13]: Career Development: Interview Prep (Technical Skiills)

[pogwon]

👀 Overview

Workshop Name

Career Development: Interview Prep (Technical Skiills)

Workshop Description

After a brief discussion and introduction, members will be allotted time to look through available technical questions, pick two to answer, and prepare their answers. Depending on how many members are present, they will be paired up and each pair will be assigned a breakout room. Each person will be given five minutes to answer, discuss, and be present feedback by their partner before switching rooms. If there are under eight participants, we will have a group interview style where each person is given 2-5 minutes to answer followed by a group feedback session. Everyone will have a chance to go once before we answer their second questions.

Date and Time

November 13, 2024 at 6 PM PST

Target Audience

Anyone who wants to practice their interview skills and be more comfortable answering questions in a professional format

💻 Pre-Workshop Preparation

Action Items

• Interview Questions
• Slack Announcment

Instructions

Format for this meeting will depend on how many members attend.

• If there are over eight participants, we should divide into pairs and assign breakout rooms for each pair. Each five-minute session will have one person answering and the other giving feedback before switching rooms. If there is an odd number of participants, one co-lead can participate.
• If there are under eight participants, we will have a group interview style where one person is given 2-5 minutes (depending on how many people are present) to answer followed by brief feedback. Everyone will go once before circling around so each person has had a chance to answer.

Resources

UX Design Questions

• https://www.springboard.com/blog/design/ux-design-interview-questions/
• https://www.coursera.org/articles/ux-designer-interview-questions-and-answers
• https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/15-essential-uiux-designer-interview-questions-answers-sachin-mittal-tlusc/
• https://www.nngroup.com/articles/answer-ux-job-interview-questions/
• https://bootcamp.umass.edu/blog/ui-ux/essential-ux-designer-interview-questions-and-answers-for-2023
• https://resources.workable.com/designer-interview-questions
• https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GdMO9i87LB6vec2Hgx844Y72akfQGNOIMFoIcpzF9p8/edit?gid=1037361934#gid=1037361934

UX Research Questions

• https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7064662703688011776/?updateEntityUrn=urn:li:fs_feedUpdate:(V2,urn:li:activity:7064662703688011776)
• https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GdMO9i87LB6vec2Hgx844Y72akfQGNOIMFoIcpzF9p8/edit?trk=public_post_comment-text&gid=274855658#gid=274855658
• https://medium.com/@eleonorazucconi/46-interview-questions-for-user-experience-researchers-at-google-amazon-microsoft-and-facebook-c582827267b9
• https://www.userinterviews.com/blog/common-ux-research-job-interview-questions-how-to-answer-them
• https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/common-ux-research-interview-questions
• https://startup.jobs/interview-questions/senior-ux-researcher

Agenda

• 6:00 - 6:10: Office Hours/Answer any questions members have
• 6:10 - 6:15: Introduction to meeting and explanation of process
• 6:15 - 6:30: Brainstorming session for participants. Each person will pick two questions to answer and can use this time to prepare their answers
• 6:30 - 6:55: Interview prep session with feedback*
• 6:55 - 7:00: Wrap up

Facilitator(s)

• Peter G.
• Aparna G.

💬 Communication

Pre-Workshop Message

Hey all 👋
Tonight’s meeting is going to be part two of our career development: interview prep with a focus on technical skills (for both Designers and Researchers)! We’ll be going the most frequently asked questions and will be holding mock interviews with one another. Come join us and practice being comfortable answering questions, providing feedback, and being in an interview setting. See you all at 6 PM PST!
Meeting Link

🔄 Post-Workshop Updates

Feedback Summary

• After talking to community members at the beginning of the meeting, they expressed that a discussion around best practices would be more helpful for them, so the meeting was more of a conversation style instead of a workshop. Each member went around sharing their resources, tips, and asking questions they had about technical interviews.

Next Steps

📝 Notes

[pogwon]

UX Design Technical Questions

1. What are your favorite examples of good or bad UX?
2. How do you respond to negative feedback?
3. Tell us about a project that went wrong and what happened.
4. Where do you find inspiration?
5. How do you stay up to date with UI/UX trends, practices, technologies?
6. How do you approach designing for mobile vs desktop?
7. Can you discuss a project where you had to balance creative freedom with stakeholder requirements?
8. What's your approach to creating accessible designs for users with disabilities?
9. How do you prioritize features when designing a product with a tight deadline?
10. Can you share an example of a design you're particularly proud of and why?
11. How do you ensure consistency in design across different screens and platforms?
12. Can you describe a time when you had to pivot your design direction based on user research?
13. How do you optimize UX designs for performance and loading speed?
14. Can you explain the concept of cognitive load and how it affects user experience in design?
15. How do you measure the success of a design product?
16. How do you collaborate with developers to ensure the design is implemented correctly?
17. What's a trend in UX design you don't agree with and why?
18. Once you have the wireframe, how do you pass on to development?
19. What is your typical design process, and which areas of the design process are your strengths?
20. Do you prefer working in a waterfall or agile development process? Why?
21. What is your experience with User Research? What role do you think should User Research play in a startup environment?
22. What are your thoughts on designing the user experience of a startup vs. a more established brand?
23. What are the differences between usability and accessibility?
24. What unique challenges exist when building responsive design websites?
25. Do you have experience designing user interfaces for large scale systems, such as an enterprise-wide data management system?
26. What are the advantages and disadvantages of following a style guide?
27. Why should business owners and/or marketing people care about UX?
28. How can carousels be problematic for users with disabilities?
29. Talk about the pros and cons of flat and skeuomorphic design trends in regards to accessibility.
30. You’re under a tight deadline and not all features in the project scope can be met in time. How would you decide which features to keep and which to cut?

[pogwon]

UX Research Technical Questions

1. Suppose that you are using eye tracking on a cross-eyed participant and the calibration cannot be successful. What do you do?
2. Imagine that a team of engineers want to know why certain users aren’t engaging with a particular push feature. They plan to conduct a survey with six yes/no questions and one question that can be answered via [a] text box. What would you tell them about their plan?
3. What are the weaknesses of personas? How do you overcome those weaknesses?
4. Suppose you come forward with a usability recommendation, and the engineers counter that with, “All the usage data we have from millions of people suggest that is not a problem.” How would you respond?
5. How would you determine a metric for engagement?
6. Assume you are an Amazon engineer. The review scores of Amazon items are sometimes biased, because people usually give a score only if they strongly like it or strongly dislike it. How would you know if the review score of a given item is biased or not?
7. Think of your favorite app. How would you go about studying decreased engagement for that app? What would you tell Project Managers about why you chose that research method?
8. What would you consider one of the most difficult challenges you’ve had as a researcher?
9. How would you monetize one of the research projects listed on your CV?
10. How would you communicate your findings to different stakeholders?
11. Which research methods and approaches do you think are the most useful or effective?
12. What is the value of conducting contextual research over facility-based research?
13. How do you approach qualitative data analysis?
14. How do you analyze ethnographic data?
15. Our company hires heavily from our own user base. How would you balance the perspectives of internal users versus external users?
16. How do you visualize results for designers and developers?
17. Give me an example of a project you worked on for which you had to translate research data into insights.
18. How would you sell the value of UX Research to a VP of Product versus a VP of engineering?
19. How do you keep up with industry trends and advancements?
20. Can you describe a time when you had to handle a problematic stakeholder and how you approached the situation?
21. Can you describe a time when you had to make a recommendation based on conflicting research insights?
22. How do you ensure that research insights are integrated into the product roadmap?
23. Can you explain the difference between behavioral and attitudinal research?
24. Can you describe a time when you had to pivot research strategies mid-project and how you approached the situation?
25. Can you describe your usual process for gathering information before starting any project?
26. What would you do if you noticed a pattern in user behavior that conflicted with your initial expectations?
27. When conducting research, how do you ensure that you are getting a representative sample of users?
28. There is a discrepancy between what users say they want from a product and what they actually do. How do you handle this situation?
29. When do you choose qualitative, quantitative, or mixed research methods?
30. What’s the most challenging part about UXR?