UI Designer interview questions and answers

UI Designer Interview Questions

Methods for evaluating a designer might seem obvious. You just take a look at the work they’ve produced. Certainly a thorough review of their portfolio is the best starting point. Setting them an assignment is equally important. Assuming that both of these are positive, the next step is to chat to them about design itself. Consider these UI designer questions to gauge their background and skills.

• Who are their role models?

• Where do they go for inspiration?

• How do they keep on top of current design trends?

• What’s an example of great design (digital or physical)?

• What books/exhibitions/conferences or communities do they attend or admire?

• As a designer, what do they think is the most important aspect of their job?

What you’re looking for is an interest in design that stretches beyond the boundaries of their own specialisms. Are they aware of and capable of thinking critically about the design decisions that surround all of us in our everyday lives? A great designer is thinking about improvements to these details.

Operational questions

Portfolio review

• Talk to us about your studies. Have you studied design?

• What’s your current occupation/What are you currently working on?

• Take us through a couple of your favorite pieces in your portfolio. What was your design process for these pieces? What problems were you trying to solve? How did you make a certain design decision?

• Tell us about a project that didn’t go as planned and the reasons that led to it.

• Do you have a side project you’d like to talk to us about?

Role-specific questions

Technical Interview Questions

What is your preferred development environment? (operating system, text editor, version control, preproccessors)

• Let’s say you start a new project right now – which solution will you choose for adding icons to the interface?

• Can you describe the difference between progressive enhancement and graceful degradation?

• What existing CSS/Sass frameworks have you used locally, or in production?

• Are you familiar with BEM or SMACSS? What do you like/don’t like about these conventions?
  
  
• How do you optimize a website’s assets & reduce page load time?

• You are working on legacy code and you find this snippet:
  What do you think is wrong with it? How would you improve it?

#content {
  width: 640px;
  float: left;
  margin-right: 20px 15px;
  padding: 20px;
  margin-bottom: 20px;
}

#sub-content {
  width: 280px;
  float: left;
  padding: 20px;
  margin-bottom: 20px;
}

#footer {
  padding: 20px;
  margin-bottom: 20px;
  background-color: #e4e4e4;
  color: #333;
}