UX Design Interviews — All they say about “Portfolios” & “Case Studies”

I would like to take a moment here and understand what is all this hype about the portfolio and case studies when you go for an interview? 😣

I have heard a lot of such scenarios back when I was mentoring on ADPList. Hence, I thought I will jot down some of my thoughts and hoping that it may help the candidates as well as the interviewers 🙂

Can we skip to the good part? 🙂

“Interview = Assessment” and you are getting to interview the person live, then why bother about case studies done in past?

I think in this world where communication and storytelling is considered very crucial for a designer. Make them speak up their thoughts of what they can do for your company rather checking what they have done in past. We have to understand that each company comes with their own culture, processes, infrastructure, workflow methods, employee strength, delivery guidelines etc. We cannot judge an employee by what they have done there because it may be “the need of the hour”.

1. Give a take home test?
2. Give them live whiteboard challenge?
3. Save time on case study round?
4. Understand the domain they have worked on?
5. How much they have researched about the domain?
6. What is the process they know, follow and why?
7. What and why they took their design decisions?
8. Asking lots of scenario based questions on test?
9. Having a quick screening round of their work experience and thoughts before moving ahead?

I myself have worked in more than 5 different companies and none of their work style matched with each other.

“We as designer should keep ourselves flexible and adapt to any situation or processes we work”

The work designers do in their present companies must be challenging enough however, there might be cases where they have to budge to make the deliveries happen on certain releases. Case studies can be faked out totally or can be presented in a way recruiters wants to see them so that they understand the process they had in mind but did not get chance to practice it. There is always a pressure to present it in a different way because if it’s natural it just flows but if its made or modified then it requires training to know how to flow.

What if we have a template of case study without showing the actual process in it? No persona, no empathy or journey maps, no user/task flows, no sticky notes, no crazy 8s, no ideations 🤯.

Processes are standards which do not change and it’s like a syntax you already know. All the templates of these processes are there on the internet. Let them speak the process with the story they narrate. Ask questions on the processes. May be we can create simple steps(like a storyboard) which narrates a story (put some vectors like in eg. https://undraw.co/ or any other free sites to show some emotions in your story or make the recruiters understand user’s feelings or behaviour). If you know to draw basic stick figures then that also should work.

How am i basically picturing it?

(Sample template of my thoughts on case study)

For interviewers — What you should “NOT LOOK FOR” while getting a walkthrough on case study?

• Small/big problem statement — Each one gets chance to work on UX projects as per the company they work in. This differentiation will not help you. Assess the process and thinking of the candidate.
• Small/Big scale companies — Candidates dream about going from small scale to big scale so let’s give them chance.
• Differentiation with service based or product based studies — Problem statement can be anything however just assess how it has matured with time and what aspirations candidates have over them.
• Bigger or famous brand/product — All don’t work in Google, Meta or any other biggies. Let us hear them out and see their portfolios in a different way.
• Recognition of case study — It may be a very small feature they have worked on and which is not known to entire world or country. Check the weightage of the problem to that particular company and how are they making difference to the end users. Eg. It may be a basic application designed for small offices or clinic but look at the impact they are making by going from paper to digital.
• Trendy visual designs — Has anyone seen this fancy looking UI’s actually developed the way we see in dribbble or anywhere? It is not realistic right? Though it looks very appealing but how usable it is? Can we really extend those fancy looking UI’s to have their own design systems? Will it help users really use them? Is accessibility considered? What i mean is just don’t call people because their portfolios have wonderful looking designs. 👩‍💻

For all the candidates I would say:

• Work on the story
• Be natural
• Mature your thoughts and start thinking about users, business and your team as well
• Work on your attitude
• Accept feedback positively
• Always have willingness to learn
• Never think you know everything
• Do not lie. Accept and show willingness to know about it

I am sure the change does not happen overnight and working as UX Designer is really not a piece of cake. We are all seen as people who make beautiful looking designs but same as how things are made to be accessed, we work to make those things accessible 😊