35 UX Designer Interview Questions and Answers 2023

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UX Design is a booming field. If you’ve been planning to take up a job as a UX Designer, you should spend some time preparing for your interview. We understand interviews can be intimidating and that’s why we’ve prepared a list of the most common UX Designer Interview Questions and Answers to help you crack that interview.

Go through these interview questions for all the tips you need to answer the questions the interviewer might ask.

Q1. How would you define UX Design?
Q2. How is UX Design different from UI Design?
Q3. What is meant by design thinking?
Q4. What makes a good UX Designer?
Q5. What are the important skills for a UX Designer?
Q6. Why did you choose UX Design?
Q7. Show me your portfolio.
Q8. Explain your design process.
Q9. What’s your favorite project that you’ve worked on?
Q10. Tell me about a time when a project didn’t go as planned. How did you fix it?

1. How would you define UX Design?

Your interviewer already knows what UX Design is. What they expect from you is to explain UX Design in your own words. They don’t want to hear a textbook definition of it. It always helps to do some research.

One of the most effective ways to answer this question is through real-life examples. You can use Airbnb’s example and talk about how co-founder Joe Gebbia attributes Airbnb to becoming a $10 billion company, to UX Design. You can also talk about Jeff Bezos’ decision to allocate 100 times more budget to customer experience than advertising in the initial days of Amazon.

Whatever you say, the key point to remember is that UX Design makes websites, apps, and other products easy to use and customer friendly.

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2. How is UX Design different from UI Design?

The terms UI and UX are usually dumped together. What they really want to know is whether you really understand what UX Design is and what it isn’t.

A lot of companies have a combined UI/UX Design team. You need to be able to communicate the difference between the two very distinct roles. While the UI team makes sure the product is looking good, the UX team makes sure that the product is working effectively and efficiently.

You can also use this opportunity to talk about your previous experience of working with a UI team, the collaboration, and different roles.

Watch this UI/UX Interview Questions & Answers:

3. What is meant by design thinking?

This is where the interviewer is trying to understand your approach to design. You should explain your approach to design and take them through your design process. Tell them about your strategy for good design and how you develop your design concepts.

Talk about the different stages involved in the process of design thinking.

• Empathize – The first step is to empathically understand the problem that needs solving. Here, you would consult experts and observe people’s experiences to fully empathize with them.
• Define – In the second step, you combine the information you collected in the first step. Then you analyze it to define the main problem.
• Ideate – In this step, you start coming up with ideas while keeping the user’s needs in mind.
• Prototype – In the fourth step, the design team comes up with scaled-down versions of the product or the features to see if the solutions work.
• Test – In the final step, you test the product and the features, utilizing the best solutions that were identified in the previous stage.

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4. What makes a good UX Designer?

Remember to not stick to any textbook definitions. Whatever you say, add your own flair to it so it also reflects your personality. With this answer, you should emphasize the skills that make up a good UX Designer.

• A good UX Designer should be able to use empathy to understand what the user needs and try to come up with the best solution.
• They should be capable of handling feedback well. They should constantly ask for it.
• They would work really hard to improve the product and themselves in the process.

5. What are the important skills for a UX Designer?

The most important skills for a UX Designer are as follows:

• Prototyping, user flows, wireframing, mockups
  UX Designers need to be able to envision what the product will look like. According to the stage of the product development process, they’ll need to create wireframes, high or low-fidelity prototypes, user flows, or mockups.
• Visual design and design software
  UX Designers need to use visual design software to create the visual design elements of a product. They need to be proficient in these tools along with knowing typography, color theory, icons, etc.
• Collaboration
  UX Designers have to collaborate with other teams regularly. They need to know how to work as part of a team.
• Communication and presentation
  While collaborating, UX Designers have to communicate. Good communication skills are important for them to be able to get better insights from customers as well. Good presentation skills are important to be able to communicate ideas with stakeholders.

6. Why did you choose UX Design?

It goes without saying that you chose UX Design because it excites you and you’re passionate about it. You need to answer this question with honesty and enthusiasm. Refrain from saying things like, “It seemed easy,” or, “It pays well”. That’s not what the interviewer wants to hear. You can answer this question by focusing on the qualities that make you a good UX Designer. You could talk about the following soft skills for example:

• Problem-solving – You’re good at solving problems and you love finding creative ways to solve challenges.
• Empathetic – You’re empathetic by nature and love understanding customer behavior.
• Curious – You enjoy learning new things and being updated with new technological trends.

Apart from this, you can also talk about how well you manage your time. You can also talk about some hard skills that are required by UX Designers.

• Visual elements – You can explain how you’ve always had an affinity toward visual design.
• Storyboarding – You can also tell them about your passion for storyboarding.
• Wireframing – You could also talk about how wireframing comes naturally to you and that you really enjoy it.

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7. Show me your portfolio.

This is one of the most asked questions in a UX Designer interview. The interviewer doesn’t just want to see your portfolio, they want you to walk them through it. This helps them understand your creative process. You should tell the interviewer why you designed things the way you did. Explain the target market, the problem, and why did you choose the solution that you did.

8. Explain your design process.

The interviewer is interested in knowing about your thought process. They want to know your approach to the problem and also why did you use that particular approach. An important aspect to mention here would be research – how you conducted user interviews by yourself or via a team of UX researchers.

Take them through the design process – tell them what you chose to do and why. Don’t forget to talk about usability testing – how you got your design validated.

9. What’s your favorite project that you’ve worked on?

You would have included your favorite project in your UI UX portfolio. When you’re taking the interviewer through your portfolio, make sure you talk about your favorites and why you liked them.

Remember to explain why this project was different from others. Was it a personal project or maybe a passion project? Was it your favorite because it challenged you and made you approach the problem in an innovative way?

The interviewer is just trying to understand what excites you so they can further understand your way of thinking.

10. Tell me about a time when a project didn’t go as planned. How did you fix it?

This question is your chance of talking about your problem-solving skills. The interviewer will also be interested in knowing that you can stay calm under pressure. You must have faced a challenging project in the past. This is the time when you use it as an example to prove your skills.

Remember to not point fingers and explain the problem without making it sound like there was any negligence on your part. It also helps to mention what you learned from the experience.

11. What is your design inspiration?

When an interviewer asks you this question, they basically want to know that there’s something that motivates you and you are excited to keep learning.

You can talk about your favorite design blogs, magazines, etc. Following is a list of blogs you should follow if you don’t already:

• UX Booth
• Boxes and Arrows
• Smashing Magazine
• 52 Weeks of UX

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12. How do you decide which features to add to your design?

This is a contextual question so it is best to use actual examples explaining why you would choose something or reject it. Take them through the entire process. Tell them how you would address the business goals and user requirements:

• Target market
• Target market’s goals
• The problem

13. What research methods do you use?

You can tell the interviewer about the type of research you use. Do you have to resort to online surveys because of budget constraints? And you wish to do more in-person interviews? You can tell them that.

The key point is to let them know that you know about the research process. Tell them about the methods you use and the methods you wish to use.

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14. What are your biggest strengths?

The best way to do this is to talk about your strengths keeping the company’s requirements in mind. You can prepare for your next interview by going through the job description carefully. Let’s look at this job description template for a UX Designer on Glassdoor for example:

According to this template, the company wants someone who can “assess user experience and ease of design”. They also want someone who will “build storyboards to conceptualize designs’, and someone who will “encourage cooperation and teamwork”. Keeping these in mind, you could say your biggest strengths are:

• Empathy: You can understand the needs of the users to help make the easiest design for them possible.
• Creativity: You can conceptualize design ideas and put them together on storyboards for the entire team to understand.
• Collaboration: You work well in teams and you know different people can bring different perspectives to the table.

15. What is your biggest weakness?

Let’s work with another job description template for this question.

According to the template, the company wants someone who will “ask smart questions”. They also want someone who can “identify design problems”. Keeping these in mind, you can sell your weaknesses as something that would still benefit the company.

• Tell them you are a curious person who wants to know everything and how that could sometimes be nagging.
• You can also tell them that you tend to be a little too critical of things at times and that helps identify problems that most others would miss.

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16. How do you handle negative feedback?

Don’t give a one-word answer and say “well”. Explain how you’re open to all sorts of feedback and it helps you become a better person. You can talk about some feedback that you received and how you handled it.

You could mention how a previous boss was very quick with negative feedback but you took it as constructive criticism. Talk about how taking feedback from within the company is much better than waiting for it to come from actual customers. Talk about working together as a team and that you believe that if there’s something you could do better you’d like to discuss it.

17. Have you ever disagreed with your team’s recommendation? What did you do?

The best answers are data-driven. You need to remember that. Tell the interviewer that you like using data and proven results to make any recommendations or business decisions.

You could talk about the time you disagreed with your team’s recommendation because of the user research you conducted. Your research had shown you that the customers weren’t responding positively to the team’s recommendation. Suggest conducting another round of usability testing so you can utilize A/B testing.

Remember that disagreements should be solved with objective data rather than subjective opinions.

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18. What excites you about this position?

All employers want to know that you’re excited about the position you’ve applied for. You can be excited about the company and the position – but these are two different things.

Reference your career goals while answering the question. Tell them how this position will help you get better or teach you new skills. Also, tell them about the other skills and experience you have that make you an ideal candidate for this role.

19. Where do you see yourself in five years?

We get that planning long-term could be difficult. You don’t need to have an exact five-year plan but you should at least have some idea of it.

If this is a career path that interests you, we’d hope you’d stay. You can tell them what this career path looks like for you. Is there a field of UX that you want to master? If that’s the case, you can explain how this position is going to help you get there. Or do you want to become a principal UX Designer? That won’t really be achieved in five years but you can explain what you could do in the next five years to get closer to that goal.

You should also make it clear that you’d want to be in the company.

20. What are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced as a UX Designer?

This is one of the common UX designer interview questions asked. While answering this question, always use examples. Use something from your portfolio to demonstrate the challenges you have faced as a UX Designer. Talk about a project that made you work on something challenging and how it helped you develop a new skill.

They want to know how you solve problems. They also want to know how you handle pressure. Talk about how you handle the circumstances.

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21. What design methods do you use?

The interviewer wants to know if you’re aware of the various design methods and which ones are you comfortable with. You can tell them about the ones that you’ve used before and why.

Here’s a list of design methods you could talk about:

• Value proposition: This is the most important one as it tells you the important things about the product – what it is, who it is for and how will it be used.
• Product strategy: The product strategy helps UX Designers understand the particular target audience, and focus on the product, and the consumer attributes.
• User interview: Conducting user interviews helps get important qualitative information from the users.

22. How do you deal with research and usability testing?

This is another opportunity for you to just talk about your past experiences. Tell them how the research you or your team conducted helped you in getting the product right. You can also tell them of a time when you conducted usability testing and it helped you with very important insights.

Take this time to explain your approach to research and usability testing, and how you’ve dealt with it in the past.

23. Tell us about a design example that solved a business problem.

You could answer this question by referencing your UI/UX Design Portfolio and telling them about a design that you worked on that solved a big business problem. You could also talk about a real-life example of some brand that benefitted from improved design.

Make sure to go into all aspects of the design and explain the problem well enough before you go into explaining how it helped. Statistics always help.

24. Describe universal design.

This is a question that is best approached with an empathetic approach. Universal design is meant to be accessible, usable, and understood by everyone regardless of their ability, disability, age, or size. A universal design should be able to meet the needs of everyone who wants to use it.

You can go into detail and explain the two approaches to universal design:

• User-Aware Design: includes as many people as possible by pushing mainstream product designs.
• Customizable Design: makes sure the design can adapt to the needs of specific users.

25. How would you make a product accessible to differently-abled users?

You can start by talking about universal design and what it is. Then you can explain the following steps:

• Adapt to different platforms: It’s important to optimize the website or app so it can work well on various devices.
• Prioritize scalability: Your product needs to be durable. If it crashes during a high influx of activity, you will lose customers.
• Take user feedback: Your product will be universally accessible if it incorporates the needs of the users you are catering to.

26. What are your favorite apps or websites and why?

Mention your favorite apps and website. Explain why you like them – what feature makes them customer-friendly, and do they inspire you?

You can use the following for example:

• Google – Google is the perfect example of a good functional UX design. Just one search area is a great customer-friendly element.
• Netflix – Netflix is pretty easy to operate and it uses an algorithm to recommend stuff based on the user’s viewing history. This helps in delivering a personalized, easily understandable interface for the user.
• Duolingo – The app makes learning fun. The entire interface is gamified so users get the feel of playing a game instead of learning.

27. Can you tell us about a design leader that you follow?

If you don’t already follow some UX Designers, you should start now. Here is a list of some UX Designers to get you started:

• Luke Wroblewski – Luke Wroblewski is the Product Director at Google. He is a widely recognized digital product leader. He has worked on various designs and software that has been used by billions of people around the world.
• Farai Madzima – Farai Madzima is the UX Lead at Shopify. He organizes the Pixel Up! Conference. He has developed various banking products that have been used around Africa.
• Whitney Hess – Whitney Hess is the CEO of Heart Work. She also hosts the podcast “Designing Yourself”.
• Graeme Fulton – Graeme Fulton is the Tea Room Manager at Prototypr.io, a website where you can find all the coolest design tools.

28. Who are your design heroes?

You can mention names from the previous answer or talk about some personal design heroes that you’ve worked with earlier, or someone who inspired you.

29. What are some UX-related publications that you read?

• UX Magazine
• UXer Talks
• Smashing Magazine
• Awwwards
• Design Shack

30. Do you have a product idea that you would want to build in the future?

You can use this opportunity to describe your dream project. Talk about the product and make sure you go in-depth about its UX Design. Tell them who the target audience is going to be and how will you personalize the experience for them.

31. How would you improve the UX of our product?

It is important that you be thorough with their product before you go in for the interview. With this UX designer interview question, they are trying to figure out whether you’ve done your homework or not. Try to answer this with as much honesty as possible without sounding arrogant. Give them a humble review of their product and suggest changes that you could bring.

32. How do you conduct the UX evaluation of a product?

As a UX Designer, you need to know how to conduct a UX evaluation for a product. You could have your favorite methods or techniques that you prefer. You can mention them here.

Some UX evaluation methods are given below:

• Aesthetics scale – This method identifies the aesthetic quality of websites. It defines the two dimensions of user perception – classical aesthetics and expressive aesthetics.
• Audio narrative – In this method, users narrate their experiences in the form of a story. This story is recorded.
• Controlled observation – People are called to a controlled environment where they test the colors or audio of the system. The data is collected in the form of facial expression videos, etc.
• Emotion cards – Users are asked to test web or mobile applications where they are provided with cards. These cards would either have a preset emotion on them or it’s just a blank field. Users fill them in when they use the product.
• Living lab method – In this method, research is conducted on the behavior of users in their natural living environments. This helps in understanding the process of making technologies that respect life’s complexities.
• Product Personality Assignment – Users go through some product designs and answer a questionnaire assigning different personalities to each design. They also have to explain the reason behind their decision.

33. What are the analytical tools, and KPIs that you based your previous evaluations on?

You can talk about various UI/UX design tools and KPIs that you’ve used when conducting a UX evaluation earlier.

Some analytical tools you could talk about are given below:

• Crazy Egg – It’s one of the simplest heatmap tools.
• Good Data – It’s a BI solution that is cloud-based. It can combine multiple data sources to provide really helpful reports.
• KISSmetrics – It is useful in creating reports and funnels based on customer behavior.

Some KPIs to consider are:

• Task success rate – The task success rate helps you measure the number of correctly executed tasks.
• Time-on-task – This describes the time that a user spends on completing a task.
• User error rate – This is the number of times a user makes a wrong entry.

34. What are the key differences between designing for desktop and mobile?

The interviewer wants to make sure you’re aware of the design differences between desktop and mobile. You can discuss the following differences:

• Screen size – There is an obvious difference between the screen sizes for desktop and mobile. That affects the layout design. Desktop apps can support fixed navigation bars while mobile apps have to be limited to pull-out menus.
• Interaction – While desktops can take full advantage of the cursor’s interactivity, mobile apps don’t have that feature. Users have to use gestures like swiping, shaking, or poking in mobile apps.
• Organizing content – In desktop apps, we can use the multi-column format offering way too many options in layouts and positioning. Mobile apps have to resort to scrolling.
• Functionality – Desktops are preferred for longer, more involved tasks while mobiles are preferred for quicker tasks.

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35. What tools do you use for prototyping?

There are quite a few prototyping tools available for UX Designers. You can talk about the ones you are most comfortable with. Some of them are as follows:

• Figma – Figma helps UX Designers with better collaboration and accessibility.
• InVision Studio – With InVision Studio, UX Designers can quickly put together functional prototypes and share them with the team.
• Adobe XD – Adobe XD provides users with a vector-based system to put together prototypes.

Conclusion

Now that you’ve gone through these UX Designer Interview Questions and Answers, we hope you’re feeling more confident about your interview. Remember to practice before you go for the interview. All the best!

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