How do you interview Senior UX Designers?

2 points by not_your_mentat 1 year ago | 4 comments

I'm currently a FE dev working for a company that makes a DB application (basically a fancy CMS for a niche industry). I've worked with great UX designers over the years at different companies but I've never been part of the hiring process for a UX designer.

I've been tasked with being part of the interview process for a UX designer. I've spent a bunch of time interviewing devs and being interviewed and I have a pretty good sense (as much as anyone, I suppose) for how to interview FE devs, but I've never been in the loop for hiring UX.

I know what's important to me as a FE dev and I'm senior enough that I have a bit of a sense of what's important to the company. That being said, I'm at the end of the hiring line and I've probably got 60 minutes max with each candidate. That's not a lot of time to secure good signal.

So, this is where I turn to you, dear people of Earth. Given my constraints, how do I best prep and deliver 60 minutes of human connection as an dev who loves design with (hopefully) a designer who's doing the thing?

cartoonbear 1 year ago |

15 years UX researcher on product and in agencies here.

Honestly I think for this role the interview should be more a gut check on personality and expectations, after you’ve seen their work and read their case studies.

That said I’d go for a deep dive on the work product from their portfolio that is most analogous to the problems your team is solving.

The best lead/senior designers I’ve worked with share some traits you should look for.

1. They are flexible, not prima donnas— but they DO have standards they’re willing to stand up for.

2. They can fluently explain WHY they made their choices, and recognize and articulate trade-offs.

3. They understand enough about research methodology to be able to internalize research results in their work product.

4. They understand development enough to know what not to do, and when to push the devs to try harder to implement.

5. They’re very quick on the uptake, and can understand the BUSINESS problem at hand, not just the visual or interaction or information problem.

6. They are clear, grammatical, concise writers. Lest you think this is irrelevant, keep in mind it’s often the UXD writing the micro copy. 7. They fully understand design systems, tokens, atomic designs and are HIGHLY organized.

In our world of UIs and complex product interactions, design systems and tokens, it’s much less important that a designer be concerned with aesthetics. The roles of wireframes (typically what I have done in the past as a UXR/generalist) is merging with the design skill. (Personally I think that trend ought to go the other way, but it is what it is.)

not_your_mentat 1 year ago | |

That's helpful. Thanks for the thoughtful response.

pelagic_sky 1 year ago |

Staff UX Designer here.

Think about what you want out of a UX designer to make your work better.

What is their design process like? Do they involve engineering early on to be a part of the process? Do they have experience writing creative briefs or contributing to engineering design docs? What do their deliverables look like? Do they love prototyping with real data? Will they push you (FE) to go above and beyond on the projects you work on. And the other way around, how do they work around roadblocks like infra constraints and spaghetti code when they cant get their initial design vision built?

There are more questions you can ask, but again, you want to be trying to find out if you will enjoy working with them as a partner and not someone who just throws designs over a wall and is inflexible on engineering constraints.

not_your_mentat 1 year ago | |

That tracks. Thanks for the response!