Okay, so UX Design doesn’t fall squarely into “marketing.” But as a marketer, you’ll likely work with UX designers a few times (perhaps at the launch of a new product) because both work on creating an intuitive and delightful experience for the consumer. It’s helpful if the marketer knows how to pitch the product that the UX designer contributed to. You may even be interested in shifting into this type of work! If you’re interested in researching the customer experience, sketching product ideas, and working with engineering teams, UX design might be for you. You get paid pretty well in this field, too! 😉 ChunBuns (Youtuber and UX Designer) made around $70K-85K in her first year of UX Design, and started making around $200K a couple of years after that.
According to Oxford Academic’s journal, Interacting with Computers, UX design is the process of “improv[ing] customer satisfaction and loyalty through the utility, ease of use, and pleasure provided in the interaction of a product.” UX designers work on making sure that a digital product, whether it is a fashion brand’s website or a grocery delivery app, is absolutely delightful to use. UX design is on the product side. So when a company wants to launch a new feature or product that needs to be built, the UX designer works on understanding how a customer is supposed to use it, and sketches out the look and feel before it heads to the engineers who build it. UX designers tend to be more analytical problem solvers with an interest in visuals and psychology.
A UX designer thinks about critical business decisions such as:
- What is the user supposed to do with this new product? What are all of the little steps required of them?
- How should the information flow? How are the different content elements designed and grouped?
- Where do the buttons go and what should they say?
- How will the user navigate our product?
How to Practice for Interviews:
- Of course, you’ll have standard cultural and behavioral fit interviews. But UX designer candidates also go through a couple of design-focused interviews to ensure a good fit between the new hire and the company. Some companies may do both of the following interviews, or not. It’s up to them, but preparing for both types is really good practice and will help you put your best foot forward.
- App Critique Interview
- In this type of interview, you prepare an app critique at home and present your thoughts in front of a group of interviewers. You are walking them through a product and talking through the good parts and bad parts. The interview panel might pre-select it or you come in with your choice.
- So for example, if they allow you to choose your own app to critique, you might pick the Doordash app because you know it well. You’ll walk through the home screen, the restaurant selection, the ordering process, etc. and talk about the design elements that are making it a good or bad experience.
- It’s like a consulting case. They want to hear you think and talk, hear how methodical you are.
- Can you balance thinking about the business needs as well as customer needs?
- Are you detail-oriented?
- Do you seem capable of driving a product forward?
- In this type of interview, you prepare an app critique at home and present your thoughts in front of a group of interviewers. You are walking them through a product and talking through the good parts and bad parts. The interview panel might pre-select it or you come in with your choice.
- Whiteboarding Challenge Interview
- In this type of timed interview, you’ll be put on-the-spot in front of a whiteboard and given a prompt. The interviewers will probably give you a hypothetical, realistic example of something that they are trying to solve.
- You’ll be writing the ‘problem statement’ on the board, with other contextual notes that they give you, and really comprehend the project. Take a lot of notes on the board!
- As you have a conversation with the interviewers, you’re supposed to ideate on a potential solution. It isn’t meant to be perfect in 1 hour (or however much time they give you), but they want to see your thought process. Talk out loud about your assumptions and how you’re making decisions.
- By the end, you should have explained what you think the user journey should be and drawn out some of the key screens.
- Femke.Design, a UX designer, has a really great Youtube video explaining more about this process.
- Portfolio Walkthrough Interview
- If you have a portfolio of past work, the interviewers might want to see your style and hear about the projects.
- You’ll need to be able to walk them through (at minimum) the context, the scope of work, your process, and the final product
- This is a great chance to demonstrate how you took a business need and translated it into something real!
Main Responsibilities:
- Gather information from other people, such as the Product team or Consumer Insights team, about this new feature
- Research the business need and look at other apps for inspiration and best practices
- Deeply understand how to bridge the business’s needs and the user’s needs
- Communicate with all stakeholders about your vision and plan for the product
- Create a storyboard of the user flow (the actions that a customer will take) with content
- Mock-up the designs on Figma or Scratch, and keep iterating
- Send your designs to the frontend development team so they can code them to life
For example, if you’re designing the webpage for a fashion brand’s new online return service, you might:
- Start by asking the team more about the plan and goals for this new return service
- Research reasons why your customers return products (e.g., sizing, fit, defective product, wrong item)
- Ask questions about how customers currently return their clothes and how the process could be better
- Design a super simple flow for the customers to follow in order to return their items
- For example: If the customer enters their order number and email address, they’ll receive a mailing label by email to print and ship.
- Make the process super easy to figure out by implementing great design
- Add a customer support chatbot or feature for easier usage of this new feature
Helpful Resources:
Though I’ve worked with lots of UX designers and have UX designer friends, I am not actually a UX designer. So I wanted to link some really helpful, explanatory Youtube videos by awesome creators that helped me understand more about this role.
- Overview of UX Design Interviews – How Are They Structured? – by chunbuns
- UI/UX Design Job Interview Questions & Answers – Ace Your Next Interview! – by Sharon Onyinye
- My First UX Design Portfolio | Advice for a Beginner – by Tanya Niu
- Presenting Portfolio Projects in a Design Interview – by femke.design
- 5 Things to Avoid During UX Design Interviews in 2019 – by Shae Illustrates
- UX Design: Our Favorite Apps (A Live Critique) – by AJ&Smart
- How to ACE Your Design App Critique in Interivews – by chunbuns
- My Uber Whiteboarding UX Challenge – by femke.design
