7 Questions We Probably Should Ask in a Product Design Interview
Finding a good design job is not easy, and I really like the nugget of wisdom shared by Jennifer Brick in this video where she suggests that we interview the company as much as the company interviews us.
Asking well-thought-out questions not only helps us learn more about the hiring manager, the team and the company to find out whether the role suits us or not, it also shows that we care about what they’re doing, helps us leave a good impression and increases our likelihood of being hired.
That’s why I’ve compiled a list of questions that I think are important that we probably should ask in a product design interview, so you can use them to get more clarity about the role you’re applying for.
1. What are some examples that can illustrate the problems the design team is trying to solve on a daily basis?
A job description won’t reveal everything to us about the project and the work we’ll be doing once we’re hired.
Even if we’ve already done our research and had a general idea of the company and the project, we still want to hear directly from the hiring manager about the specific design challenges we’ll tackle in this role.
This is especially true for big corporations where each team or designer tends to own only a small part of a large-scale project. The problem that one designer needs to solve could be quite different from the one assigned to another designer.
2. How big is the design team?
Team size can have an impact on how we feel in our design job. If there are many designers working on the same project, ownership sometimes can be confusing, especially if the project is poorly managed or when politics is involved. We may also have more design reviews to attend, more comments to listen to and more constraints to accommodate. We’ll also probably need to do a lot of socializing to get buy-ins for our ideas.
While we may have more ownership and enjoy more creative license when working in a smaller team, we may also have more workload and burden.
So it really depends on what we’re looking for or what career stage we’re in. If we just started our career or enjoy a lot of collaboration, we may want to work in a large team. If we’re innovative and would really like to push forward our ideas, or if we’re looking for more creative license, the resistance we get when working in a small team probably will be smaller as well.
3. What’s the typical working relationship between designers and PM at your company?
Designers need to collaborate with PMs, a lot.
There are so many things we want to know more about the PM: How does design fit into the overall project? What’s the PM’s expectation of design? Is UX being valued? Is design being integrated into the overall product strategy? Who will be leading research on product strategy? Who will dictate the product direction? Will the PM do competitor analysis with designers? How does the PM plan to work with designers?
I’ve worked with PMs that understand design and PMs that think of designers only as mockup factories.
Ask this question so we can assess if our strengths will be leveraged and how likely we and the PM can work together in a productive way.
4. How do you guys do design reviews?
You want to ask this question to know how hard it typically will be for your designs to be approved.
While design reviews can help us get feedback and establish guardrails for the quality of our crafts, having an excessive amount of them is a sign that the team or the company has fallen into the trap of design by committee, which typically leads to mediocre results. Bold, innovative or high-quality designs cannot survive this kind of design culture.
5. What are some of the features the team shipped last year? What were designers’ contributions in shipping those features?
Asking this question gives you a glimpse of the productivity of the team. Did they move fast? Did they fail fast? Did they ship first then iterate or did they get bogged down in details and bureaucracy and therefore were not able to ship anything?
You want to work for a team that ships features regularly so that your crafts can be seen and used by real customers. It’s also a sign of a healthy company.
6. If there’s one thing you wish the team could do a little better, what would it be?
I came across this question from one of the videos in Jennifer’s channel. It’s a general question that you can ask in many types of interviews, and I believe it’s a good one for product design interviews as well.
Ask this question when having your 1–1 interviews with members from cross-functional teams in your onsite to gauge how well the teams collaborate. You’ll also know from their answers in advance some of the potential problems you may run into should you decide to work there, so you can deal with these problems more effectively.
7. What’s your management style?
Some design managers are more hands-on and involved in projects regularly, while others are more hands-off and only jump in when necessary. This is a good question to ask when we are having the interview with the hiring manager.
The specific roles that design managers play also vary from company to company. Some focus on team building, recruiting and allocating design resources while others also regularly have 1–1s with individual designers to offer support when challenges inevitably arise during the course of a project.
If the hiring manager gives you a solid answer to this question, then you can be more confident that you’ll be able to be learn and grow a lot in the new role.
Final Thoughts
If you struggle with asking questions at the end of a product design interview, I hope the 7 questions above can offer inspirations. You can also adapt and adjust them to suit your own situation. If you have other good questions you’d like to share, leave a comment and let me know.
This article is also available at my blog, and if you enjoy this post, you might also want to read this one on design maturity.