I’ve charted 4 notable periods when I was actively interviewing:
Right after college, I was seeking my “calling” when I found an agency in NYC! I adapting printed kids books into iPad apps. I loved it, but like many agencies, it was waterfall and we rarely followed up after a release.
I went searching again. This time I found a HR product company, where I learned about compliance and how to make boring admin tasks interesting, but the company shifted away from building features in-house.
After that, I found myself as the sole designer at a edtech startup. I loved working with educators and having so much ownership, but it was also challenging and unpredictable.
I’m searching again – now with a better sense of what I want in my next role (I think).
What got me here were dozens of googledocs, a spreadsheet cataloging 80+ companies I applied to, Asana boards to track stages, and countless take-home and on-site exercises. I highlighted a couple of exercises below.
RedOwl
RedOwl is a cybersecurity system that detects human risk. I interviewed as their second design hire (before they were acquired by ForcePoint by Raytheon). For the interview process, I was asked to design an experience that would enable someone to uncover where their credit card info was stolen.
For my take-home assignment, I casually interviewed a friend who found herself in a similar situation, sought out online resources to better understand user needs, and sketched out wireframes.
Clark
Clark is a B2B tutoring management system. I interviewed to be their sole designer. For my take-home exercise, I designed an experience for an emergency room communication system. See Original Prompt
I emphasized how not only is it essential for staff to triage patients’ needs, it's also useful for a patient to triage the importance of their requests.
Frame
Frame is a collaborative video editing tool. I was invited on-site to design an experience for purchasing and refilling a transit card at a kiosk. Currently, MTA offers a 5% bonus when you put $40 on your card. (After doing some math, I figured out this gets you 15 rides and some change leftover.)
To encourage educated decision-making, I chose to focus on the number of rides the commuter will get for the price they pay (i.e. a 30-day unlimited card for $121 = 44 rides).
Flatiron
Flatiron processes patient data in an effort to accelerate cancer research. I was invited on-site to design an experience for a physical alarm clock. It was a bit mind-bending working with an analog product with physical constraints, but a lot of the principles were the same as designing for digital products. I considered the discoverability of each action and visual feedback indicating whether the action was completed for a myriad of use cases, such as:
• set / view / edit time
• set / view / edit / cancel alarm
• snooze / stop alarm (while it’s going off)
Illustrated below is my messy whiteboarding:
Since I'm interviewing for product design roles with an emphasis on UX and research, I prefer on-site whiteboarding exercises with other team members. This type of exercise more accurately captures my thought process and demonstrates how I would collaborate with others. Plus, it's timeboxed.
I based my framework off Zhenshuo Fang’s article and practice with these prompts from uxcurate.io.
