Interviews

Question 1

My positive and negative traits

Answer 1

Positive
1. Love to texts (UX writing)

Positive but can be negative

1. Always dig too deep (direct, secondary, indirect competitors and functional UX homework)
2. Usually I don’t fully trust till I check it by myself (fine in auto Korshunov, competitors)

Negative but work on it

Question 2

What a designer doesn’t do?

Answer 2

1. People management

2. Usually prioritization

Question 3

5W1H

Answer 3

Why I am building this
Who am I building it for
Where and when it will be used
What am I building

How to measure

Question 4

When the user and the customer are not the same

Answer 4

This is usually the case for B2B2C solutions. For example, if you’re building an appointment-scheduling system for clinics, your users will be patients and clinic personnel (doctors, nurses, receptionists). However, the customer to whom this product will be sold is clinics. Most probably it won’t change the solution, but it’s something worth remembering and mentioning during the presentation.

Question 5

Hints to clarify your audience more precise

Answer 5

1. Age (think how differently Snapchat would be designed if their target audience was adults aged above 50 )
2. Gender (81% of Pinterest users are women. It would “be hard to ignore this while building new features)
3. Location (Spotify is more likely to be streamed to Apple TV when used at home and more likely to be listened to with headphones at work)
4. Occupation (real estate agents spend less time in front of their computer than software engineers, but more time on their cell phones)
5. Mobility (transportation type, travel habits, commuter preferences — Amazon’s Audible mobile app has a car mode with an adjusted interface, since it’s commonly used during car commuting)

Question 6

Example of audience dividing for the task ‘improve Spotify mobile experience’

Answer 6

The first step would be listing high-level audiences: listeners, artists, business owners. You decide to go with listeners.

Spotify has already made headway with this differentiation of listeners, providing dedicated features for runners, club music lovers, podcast listeners etc. You could develop ideas for new interesting features by listing different groups, for example, by age:

• Children (a feature that allows parents or even teachers to use Spotify for audio lessons for children)
• Millennials (spend a lot of time listening to music and being with friends.15 I assume they also do these things together.You could suggest building a shared Play Queue, so a group of friends could add songs to play on Spotify on the background)
• Baby boomers (they are more likely to live in the suburbs and commute by car into the city. You could suggest building a podcast or audiobook experience tailored for a car commute).

Question 7

What do you want to do / what you are currently looking for in the role

Answer 7

1. Higher level: I want to make a positive impact on people’s lives by designing the product. In past I used to work for social gaming company and I left it because I understood that I can not devote myself for something I don’t feel making a positive impact in general.
2. Higher level: One of my ambitions is to help company to rise not only user experience and excitement but also some clear business metrics.
3. Lower level: I want to deal with UI, UX, researches, product experiments via A/B testing and active collaborating with the whole team.

Question 8

what you don’t want to do

Answer 8

• I really don’t want to work on unethical features and don’t want to use dark UX patterns (like sneaking to the cart some extra goods by default hoping that the person doesn’t notice and buy it by mistake)
• I do believe in the power of long-term relationships with customers

Question 9

your current employment status

Answer 9

I am on maternity leave + I am working on a startup application on part-time basis

Question 10

Intro for designing kiosks interfaces

Answer 10

“Interviewer: We want you to design a kiosk for liquid soap and shampoo refill.

Candidate: Great, where is this product going to be placed? Companies providing living spaces (hotels, hostels, co-living spaces) or retailers (supermarkets, convenience stores, beauty salons, pharmacies) could be interested in this product.

Interviewer: Let’s focus on the retail market, specifically supermarkets and convenience stores.

Candidate: OK, how about the physical part of the kiosk, can I modify it?

“Interviewer: The kiosk has a touch-screen, two sinks — one for shampoo and one for soap - and a credit card reader. You can’t modify the hardware.

Candidate: Great, is there just one type of each product or more?

Interviewer: There are three variants for each product.”

Excerpt From
Solving Product Design Exercises: Interview Questions & Answers
Artiom Dashinsky
https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewBook?id=0
This material may be protected by copyright.

Question 11

Intro for a dashboard for a freelancer

Answer 11

“Interviewer: We want you to design a business management dashboard for a freelancer.

Candidate: Great, can I assume we’re designing the dashboard for a web app?

Interviewer: Only if you think it makes sense.”

Excerpt From
Solving Product Design Exercises: Interview Questions & Answers
Artiom Dashinsky
https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewBook?id=0
This material may be protected by copyright.

Question 12

The list of product metrics

Answer 12

• Project completion rate
• Freelancer’s growth (they earn more)
• Retention over time
• Engagement (defined actions - performance rate)
• NPS”

Question 13

In the end, finally

Answer 13

Eventually

Question 14

Eventually

Answer 14

In the end, finally

Question 15

Making a suggestion

Answer 15

“I assume they would be”

“I will make the assumption that”

Question 16

what are the best frameworks of design process?

Answer 16

1. Design Thinking: Empathise, define, ideate, prototype, and test. Iterating until a final product is developed.

1.1. Human-Centered Design: its four principles are people-centered, solve the right problem, everything is a system and small and simple interventions.

3. Double Diamond: Discover, Define, Develop, and Deliver. The first two phases involve exploring the problem space and identifying user needs, while the second two phases involve developing and testing solutions.
4. Lean UX: This is a design process that emphasizes speed, agility, and collaboration. It involves creating a minimum viable product (MVP) and then testing it with users to gather feedback and iterate on the design.
5. Agile UX: This is a design process that is integrated with agile software development. It involves working in short sprints, collaborating closely with developers, and testing and iterating on designs throughout the development cycle.

Question 17

What’s the difference between human-centered design and design thinking? (From IDEO)

Answer 17

Human-centered design is a creative approach to problem solving. It’s the backbone of all our work at IDEO. It’s a process that starts with the people you’re designing with and ends with new solutions that are purpose-built to suit their needs. Human-centered design is about cultivating deep empathy with the people you’re designing with; generating ideas; building a bunch of prototypes; sharing what you’ve made together; and eventually, putting your innovative new solution out in the world.

Design thinking, as IDEO’s Tim Brown explains, is a human-centered approach to innovation. It draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success. Successful innovations rely on some element of human-centered design research while balancing other elements. Design thinking helps achieve that balance. It lets people find the sweet spot of feasibility, viability, and desirability while considering the real needs and desires of people.

Question 18

The Designer’s Toolkit for Tackling Tough Problems (IDEO)

Answer 18

1. Headline for a New York Times from the future
2. Take an inspiration tour (For example, maybe we want the new health clinic we’re designing to feel safe, fun, and community-affirming. Then, quickly brainstorm 10 places, businesses, or brands that do this well in your city.)

Question 19

More specifics of design thinking and Human-centered design

Answer 19

While both processes have many similarities, the approaches have different aims. The aim of human-centred design is to develop a product with a high degree of usability and user experience. Design thinking, however, aims at developing innovative and creative solutions for complex issues. These will ideally satisfy the users’ requirements, be realizable from a technical point of view and also prove to be economical.

Hence, design thinking has a larger scope of use. While human-centred design mostly focuses on the user interface and known issues, design thinking goes beyond such limitations: It can be used for developing new products and services but also for evolving concepts for the solution of social questions. In contrast to human-centred design, design thinking often questions existing problems or develops entirely new questions.

Question 20

How do you use Design Thinking and Human-Centered Design Together?

Answer 20

Design Thinking was as originally popularized by IDEO for creating commercial products (like the original apple mouse), and it is typically used to create market-based products and/or services. Human-Centered Design takes this a step further and provides a mindset and tools to ensure these products and/or services actually improve the lives of the end-users or beneficiaries. Combined, they offer a process and mindset that creates self-sustaining solutions to some of the world’s greatest challenges.

Question 21

What is html and css

Answer 21

HTML stands for the content. Without CSS we would need to style each piece of content separately and then to apply changes to each string separately either. CSS is a container for the style. We change style at only one place, and then all pieces of HTML that are affected by this class are changed either

Question 22

Human centered design (from NNG, Norman)

Answer 22

Human-Centered Design (HCD) is not about following processes. It’s about being mindful of HCD principles. Keep focus on people and the entire system to solve the right problems.

It’s a mindset. Find a right problem, not its symtoms.

Think not only about users, but also about colleagues, stakeholders, so on. Think about everything as about the system.

Everything is interconnected.

Question 23

page parking

Answer 23

This behavior often occurs when shopping, researching, or reading news, but can happen in any task where it’s useful to open several similar items, each in a separate tab. Often for millenials.

Users like page parking in tabs because it allows them to separate two phases of research:

1. Hunting for information. The user scans a list of available options and decides which ones may be worth further consideration. These items are parked in new tabs but are not considered in detail at this stage. Thus, the user’s attention is not sidetracked by analyzing detailed information while he or she is still in an overview mode.
2. Digesting the information. Later, the user turns to inspecting individual tabs. During the digestion stage, pages that were saved in the hunting stage may be read or summarily rejected, but in either case, the user can focus on one page at a time.

Second, while the pages are parked, the tabs serve as a memory aid, freeing users from having to remember the items they are interested in.

Question 24

Tell about your design process

Answer 24

I have experience using various design process frameworks such as design thinking, human-centered design, double diamond, and lean UX. For each project, I choose the approach that fits the problem best, or I combine them if necessary.

Mostly, I use the double diamond approach with its four stages: discover, define, develop, and deliver. Working on projects in design agency, I mostly used Double diamond. However, for a recent mobile app project called Sticky goals, I used the lean UX approach, creating an MVP and then researching how users interact with it.

My design process includes research, ideation, prototyping, and testing.

Although research is not always necessary before starting. Regarding research, I usually start with data to form a hypothesis. I then build a research strategy that combines business purpose, goals, research questions, and hypothesis. I prefer in-depth interviews for research, starting with a screening survey.

For ideation sessions, I often use workshops or concentrating alone using creative techniques like behavioral maps, mindmaps, quick sketching, and so on. I use Figma for creating solutions and prototyping, and sometimes for testing. Beta-testing of released product is another good option. When resources are limited, I use testing without users techniques like heuristic evaluation and GOMs methods.

I believe that iteration is necessary for success and appreciate collaborative design. I often facilitate workshops during all stages of design process, not only ideation. Collaboration with stakeholders is also essential for me, as it helps me get more insights and gather feedback to incorporate into my work — as it was during the exclusively research project ‘IT generation’ helped to change the research strategy on the go and get more insights.

In summary, I have found that working in cross-functional teams and closely with stakeholders leads to the best results.

Question 25

Starting conversation ATM

Answer 25

“Interviewer: We want you to improve the ATM experience.

Candidate: Would you like me to focus on the experience of using an ATM we’re familiar with today or should I rethink the whole concept of how people interact with their bank to perform financial operations?

“Interviewer: Let’s focus on the ATM experience as we’re familiar with it today.

Candidate: Great, should I focus on a specific type of ATM? For instance, those installed in bank branches or third-party ATMs we see in convenience stores?

Interviewer: Let’s explore the kind that is owned by a bank and either mounted on a wall on the street or inside bank branches.

Question 26

If I see that the scope is way too big to finish it in 20 minutes, then I call it out.

Answer 26

I say something like ‘I can see this problem has multiple use cases, so in order to get something valuable end of this task, I’d like to focus on the first use case, is that alright?’