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How to prepare for your UX job interview

teacher avatar POSI UX, Jennifer Alt & Beth Johnson

Watch this class and thousands more

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Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      How to prepare for your UX job interview

      1:41

    • 2.

      SECTION 1 | The value of a portfolio presenation

      4:39

    • 3.

      ACTIVITY | Creating your UX portfolio presentation

      2:53

    • 4.

      SECTION 2 | What is an app critique

      1:24

    • 5.

      How to do an app critique

      3:09

    • 6.

      How to practice an app critique

      4:57

    • 7.

      What UX interviewers are looking for in an app critique

      0:47

    • 8.

      SECTION 3 | What is UX whitebording

      1:41

    • 9.

      How to do a UX whiteboarding exercise

      2:48

    • 10.

      How to practice whiteboarding

      6:03

    • 11.

      What UX interviewers are looking for in a whiteboarding exercise

      0:46

    • 12.

      SECTION 4 | What to expect from a UX design challenge

      1:25

    • 13.

      How to do a UX design challenge

      4:19

    • 14.

      SECTION 5 | Intro to getting your UX interviews underway

      0:41

    • 15.

      Know the company you're applying for, in and out

      1:39

    • 16.

      The typical UX interview process

      3:52

    • 17.

      UX interview questions to ask and to prepare

      3:49

    • 18.

      Interview dos dont's

      2:06

    • 19.

      Interview follow-up

      1:08

    • 20.

      SECTION 6 | Art of negotiation

      1:36

    • 21.

      SECTION 7 | UX interview recap

      1:03

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About This Class

This course is geared toward those who want to move into UX Design. The process and concepts may be applied across different design fields, however, we had future UX designers in mind.

The process for interviewing for a UX Design position can be extensive. This class will prepare you for each typical stage of the interview process specific to UX Designers. That could include an app critique, a whiteboarding exercise, and/or a design challenge. We will talk about what it takes to crush your interview and negotiate your compensation. Valuable information! We hope that you walk away from this course with a job offer in hand.

Need feedback?
POSI UX is available for professional portfolio review and presentation feedback.
Schedule time through either of the links below.

Schedule time with Jennifer Alt
Schedule time with Beth Johnson

Meet Your Teacher

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POSI UX

Jennifer Alt & Beth Johnson

Teacher

Hello! We are POSI UX.
Jennifer Alt is a Sr. Experience Designer, Strategy at Prophet, and former freelancer. Within her 16-year career, she has built growth-generating digital experiences that solve problems, advocate for users, and deliver results. 

Beth Johnson is a Sr. Product Designer at Experian. She's a strategic-minded multilingual Designer with a track record in delivering impactful user-centered products. She enjoys creating practical, user-focused solutions that help businesses succeed.

See full profile

Related Skills

Design UI/UX Design
Level: Beginner

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Transcripts

1. How to prepare for your UX job interview: Hello and welcome to how to prepare it for UX interview. I'm Beth Johnson and I'm a senior product designer, and I'm Jennifer all as senior experienced design with focus on strategy. And together we are paused the UX for those of you who have completed our first course, how to land a job in UX. Welcome back. We're excited to have you join us deeper into the world of UX. For those of you joining us for the first time. Welcome and thank you for following along on our journey in our previous course, how to land a job in UX, we covered everything you need to know to prepare to get your first UX interview. We recommend watching it again if you're new to the field or need a refresher before starting our interview process. For those of you who have already landed an interview, congrats, that's a huge accomplishment. You put in a lot of hard work to get here, pat yourself on the back, but don't throw in the towel just yet. If you have not secured a job interview, don't worry. Perseverance is everything. The more nodes you get, just lead to that yes, that matters. You're here putting in the hard work and that's a win. Now, it's time to prepare for the series of interviews you may go through to get that coveted job offer. In this course, we have an activity to help you create a portfolio presentation. We will also prepare you for each typical stage of the interview process specific to UX designers. That could include an app critique, whiteboard exercise, and or a design challenge. We will talk about what it takes to crush your interview and negotiate your compensation. Good stuff. We hope that you walk away from this course with a job offer in hand. Let's jump right in the next video, we'll discuss how to craft a strong portfolio presentation. 2. SECTION 1 | The value of a portfolio presenation: If you have your first interview scheduled, fantastic. Now that you have your foot in the door, it's time to drive it home with a great portfolio presentation that demonstrates how your work is going to bring value to the new team. A big part of the interview process for a UX designer is reviewing your portfolio. Y, just as you look for specific qualities and a prospective employer, they look for specific qualities and each candidate, they want to know if you have what it takes to solve the problem. So the team has and support the teams needs. They're also looking for specific personalities and soft skills that complement the current team dynamic interviewers that each company wants to know what problems you have experienced solving, how successful your solutions have been, how good you are at communicating about your process and what value you have contributed through your role on these projects. All of this will help them gain a clear picture of who you are as a candidate and if you would be a good addition to the team, above all else, your portfolio review is an opportunity to sell yourself and demonstrate your presentation skills, both of which come handy in your day-to-day job as a UX designer, let's dive into how to set up your portfolio presentation in portfolio reviews, most employers want to see more than what is available on your portfolio site. The case studies that you have in your portfolio site should be more condensed compared to what you want to use in your portfolio interview. You want to dive deeper into the details to round out the story of each project and answer questions about your technical skills, execution, ability to collaborate, unique challenges and how to overcome them, learnings and how you apply them in your design rationale. The best format to set up your presentation is a slide deck. You can use tools such as keynote, Google Slides, or PowerPoint. You want at least two in-depth case studies to walk there. However, you should always have a third case study prepared at the end of presentation. In case you find you have more time to fill as much as possible, review the work that is relevant to the role you're applying for. Explain why you're showing the selected case studies and your deck and how the work relates to the role you're applying for. E.g. if you've applied for a role with a financial institution, show work that demonstrates your knowledge for specific things related to the industry, such as identity verification, security, and authentication. If you don't have specific word that ties to that industry, talk about how the work that you have done has helped you explore similar problems and ways to solve them. If you need help building case studies, you can watch the previous course from palsy UX, where we break down everything you need to know to build a good case study presentation. Review the constraints that were uncovered during each project to demonstrate that you can identify when a pivot is needed and come up with new solutions that work better for the problem when new information has come to light. This shows you can work through issues that arise in a flexible manner and not break under pressure. Credit the other team members who were involved in the work. It shows your collaborative and a strong team player, a soft skill that is highly valued in the UX teams. Solving user and business problems is rarely a one-person show. So be sure to talk about how each row supported the final outcome you're presenting in your case study. In your presentation deck. In addition to your case studies, you want to discuss your background and highlight your interests in the role that you're applying for. And few some of your personality into the presentation. They want to see if he will complement the team. Well, also your portfolio presentation should only take around 45 min. Typically the interview will be allotted 60 min, but you want to save 15 min at the end to allow whoever is interviewing you to ask questions. Try to keep this as conversational as possible. Once your presentation is complete, practice, practice, practice. Know your work like the back of your hand. Practice presenting someone who doesn't know the details of the work. That way they can ask questions and point out any confusion. So you can work out the kinks before your interviews, prepared beforehand. Questions that might come up during the interview and practice responding and might help to write down possible questions and answers to ensure that you can thoroughly explain each one. If you would like professional help with a portfolio review or just having someone to practice activities with, such as whiteboarding, app critiques, design challenges, or anything else. We have a link in the course description where you can put time with Jennifer or myself, Beth, to get one-on-one help. The next video, we will demonstrate how to create a good portfolio presentation. So let's get started. 3. ACTIVITY | Creating your UX portfolio presentation: Before we jump into the presentation, there are few things that you need to gather to create this presentation. A slide presentation software such as PowerPoint, Keynote or Google Slides 1 to visually interesting fonts that pair well and are easy to read. Your background and bio content. Two to three of your case studies. Make sure that those case studies you pick showcase similar work or solve similar problems to the company you're interviewing with. Additionally, you need visual mock-ups to round out the extra details that are not in your portfolio site. For this exercise, we'll be using Keynote, but feel free to use whatever presentation tool works most efficiently for you. Throughout your presentation, pay close attention to the 12 basic principles of good design. Contrast. Balance, emphasis, proportion, hierarchy, repetition, rhythm, pattern, whitespace. Movement. Variety. Unity. Utilizing the principles of good design, shows your thoughtful designer and have attention to detail. Next, established a few layouts that you will repeat for specific types of content, e.g. perhaps all case study opportunity intros have a same format or all transition slides have a specific design element or color scheme. There are a few main elements you want in your portfolio presentation. A title slide, Agenda slide, your background information. Case studies, interviewer, open questions. A. Thank you. Slide. Any backup case study. In terms of design and layout, you could use a pre-designed template and customize it to fit your brand. If you go this route, you will need to update colors and fonts to fit your brand and then add any personalized custom content. This way, only minor layout adjustments will be needed. If you want to use a template to get started, here is a free keynote template you can use. However, if you want more control and personality infused to your presentation, you should create an entire deck from scratch. We recommend this approach as it showcases your abilities as a designer. If you decide to create your own, you should come up with designs for some key layouts, such as two-thirds, left, two-thirds, right, half and half. Full centered title, full centered text. Full images with text overlay, etcetera. Research designers from fellow UX designers and use that as a jumping off point. Now, let's get started in creating your portfolio presentation. 4. SECTION 2 | What is an app critique : An app critique is an exercise for you evaluate an app and identify various key aspects of the design and technology. The main objective is to demonstrate your understanding of the problems the app is solving for, who it is solving for, and how the app functions and a user-centered way and what can be improved. The interviewer wants to understand if you can identify and articulate these points in a way that applies is strategic and user-centered approach. During the exercise, you will speak out loud and answer any prompts and interviewer gives you. Let's jump in into how the app works. They want to see how you rationalize decisions, generate ideas, and understand how deep your technological comprehension goes. As an advocate for good UX, often they will tell you to take a look at the ten most popular apps, such as Google Maps or Apple Maps, Yelp, Uber, Lyft, amazon, Spotify, and medium. You'll want to start downloading them as many as possible to examine and have a good understanding of each. Start practicing the framework covered in the next video. This will help you tear down each app so you feel confident speaking out loud and examining one of them in depth. Plan for about an hours worth of discussion with your interviewer. In the next video, we will jump into how to execute an app critique. 5. How to do an app critique: On the day of their critique, your interviewer were either pick the app for you or give you a list to choose from. When doing the critique, you should identify and articulate the following business problems. The APSA solving for key user segments, jobs to be done, or how the app meets user goals, UX and UI patterns, heuristic issues that need to be addressed, and opportunities for improvement. A helpful tip, be sure to understand current UI and UX guidelines, such as Apple's human interface guidelines, google material design guidelines. Additionally, understand recent app design trends and patterns to add to the discussion. Rationalize the why behind everything that you're sharing. The interviewers will want to understand how you make decisions. Write down some of the frameworks and the questions you want to touch on and make sure to have those on a note somewhere that you can glance at. Keeps speaking aloud to explain your entire thought process. To start your critique, tell the interviewer or the approach that you're taking. And then begin to examine key areas of the experience. And start by using the UX audit. First established the user and the problem. What are the company's goals that the app is trying to achieve? Identify the problem. What is the primary problem that app is trying to solve? Identify the user, who is the primary user of the app. Provide contexts of when the user might use the app along your journey. What are the moments that matter? Next, do a UX audit and look at the structure of the app. Is there consistency, export information architecture, and navigation. Our users able to cancel or undo actions. The purpose of the app clearly conveyed is the navigation clear? Can task be quickly and effortlessly completed? After looking at the structure, examined the interaction design. Is language clear and easily understood? What affordances and signifiers are used to set user expectations and guide them to perform an action. Is new information or meaningful ads for interpretation included? Look at animation and gestures are the applied effectively to draw attention to a point of conversion or action? Are there interaction problems that stand out? Next, look at the UI and visual design. Is the UI aesthetically appropriate? How successful is the use of space? From a visual standpoint? What are your initial feelings when opening the app? Does the use of colors support the functionality of the app? How successful are the icons, illustrations, buttons, fonts, and negative space? Are the UI patterns consistent throughout the app? Finally, identify problems you notice within the experience and what you would do to solve the problems you have identified. In the next video, we will explore ways to practice your app critique. 6. How to practice an app critique: In AP critique can feel like a big event, but as you practice it, it will become second nature. The more you practice, the more the skill will become a strength. When you begin, it's beneficial to speak aloud, to feel more comfortable, ask friends, family, or a mentor to practice with you. Have them play the role of the interviewer. You can have them select an app or choose yourself as you go through the critique, share your screen so the person practicing with you can follow along, prepare OSF questions and interviewer may ask you and have them go through as you walk through the app, this will give you a leg up and you'll be more comfortable with navigating an application and articulating the experience. Today we're going to walk through Airbnb. Beth, Can you walk me through the process of booking a stay? Yeah. So as a user of the Airbnb app, I'm going to look at this main screen. Okay? And I see at the top there's this call-out about 20:22, summer. I see the bottom navigation wishlist, trips inbox profile. The first option is Explorer. And I see where you're going, so I think I'm going to click on that. Okay, When I see where are you going, I can type in here. Let's say we're going to Nashville. Nashville is great. So it pops up automatically. Okay. Now I see find a place to stay, a month we stay or an experience. So I want to book a stay. I don t think I'm going to stay for a month, so I'm picking the first option. Okay. Now I'm seeing a calendar. Okay. I see calendar or I'm flexible. I think I know my dates, so I'll probably pick them, but I also can see plus or minus one day, two days, three days, or seven days. So this is telling me that if I don't know my exact dates, I can open that range a little bit. I can also skip, which is interesting, so I can book a stay. If I don't know the dates, I just kinda wanna see what's in Nashville. So maybe I'm going to try that, okay. And just say it's just gonna be me. So now I'm seeing options for adults, children, infants, pets. I can skip this too. I'm just going to say it's just me. Alright. See what we come up with. So now I'm seeing Nashville add date so I can pick, there's different filters here. I can pick the date, the price, the type of the amenities, and the cancellation policy. And I'm seeing a map which is showing me the different prices of stays available place on the map. Or there's this action sheet that is able to expand and take over the full screen, which is showing the all available stays. And now they have a persistent floating navigation that will allow me to go back to the map view. So that's really helpful if I want to pick between the two options, different types of users, 1% might want them out view one might want this sheet. So that's good because they're both readily available, good assumptions. And so we're able to see the search area. We can zoom in and out and not adjust so you can change your radius. Okay? So I think this process is pretty intuitive from user perspective. There's lots of things helping guiding me and lots of options to further refine the search, like the price range, the type that updates and gives me the feedback that it has taken that into consideration. Okay. So if I pick this place, e.g. I see it selected on the map. I see the details, the readings, and there is a floating navigation to check availability since I didn't pick the dates. So let's say I know I'm going to pick the 19th and 22 September. That's great. Oh, no. Oh, okay. Here's an issue. This looks like this is available, but it might be grayed out because it's not letting me select all those dates. So this may be an, a user issue because I think from already having used the app, I need to pick more days than it's allowing me or fewer, but it's not. Now. It wasn't giving me that feedback initially. So that could be an improvement of the app. So it says check out only the date is unavailable for check-in. So that prompt didn't come up when I was trying to select the date. So that could be an improvement right away. Get comfortable doing the analysis, answering questions, and following a coherent flow while speaking out loud. Your interview, we're focused on your skills versus the app itself. You should be able to answer questions clearly without much difficulty. If you have access to someone within the UX industry, practice with them so they can easily highlight areas that may need improvement before the interview. 7. What UX interviewers are looking for in an app critique: During an app critique, interviewers want to see how you rationalize ideas, your understanding of technology, and your product thinking. They want to see that you apply a high level of discretion and care with each decision that you make when creating solutions. This provides a window for them to appear in to see how you operate as a UX advocate, for team and for product. If you want help practicing your app critique, you can contact myself. But Origen, feel free to book time with us through the link provided in the course description below. Next up, we'll be discussing whiteboarding exercises, what they are, how to execute them, and how to practice. 8. SECTION 3 | What is UX whitebording: Whiteboarding exercises are often used to gain a clear understanding of a designer's thinking process and approach to problem-solving. It is a practical way for you to demonstrate your skills and give the interviewer a clear picture of how you solve challenges. Being able to articulate your process in this context gives a team an idea of what you are like to work with. It highlights your ability to utilize this practice as a means to solve complex UX problems. This is a skills-based interview. In this interview activity, you will walk through the full process of designing a product or a portion of an experience and a short timeframe while showing your interviewers what your product and design thinking processes. You'll be given a prompt for a product issue to solve, such as improved Yelp or redesign a purchase flow for Amazon, you'll be expected to walk through the process and create a design in about 60 min. Most of the time you will be giving a prompt or problem by the interviewer on the day of your whiteboarding interview. Your task is to understand what you're building, discern what the problem you're solving is. Come up with a practical solution and talk about how you would measure success. Success could be measured by data or use your testing. What metrics would you look for to prove your solution meets business and user goals? And a pre remote environment, more than likely, you would have been physically drawing and writing on a whiteboard. This is where the term comes from and are now remote world. You can plead this exercise with tools such as Figma, Miro, mural, Google Draw, and something comparable. In this next video, we'll discuss how to conduct a whiteboarding exercise in Miro. 9. How to do a UX whiteboarding exercise: To start whiteboarding exercise, ask some fundamental questions to know what is expected of you. What are the requirements, what are you expected to deliver? And at what fidelity? Fidelity means low level of completion and detail. Do you need to present the final solution once finished? Or will speaking aloud as you're working be enough? Every interview and every team is different. So you might be surprised with what the final result they want you to deliver is. Make sure that you know what they are expecting upfront while doing the white boarding exercise, articulate the reasons why you're making decisions. So your interviewer can follow along as you go, verbalizing as much of your thought process as possible. It may seem overkill, but this step is important. It can help to remind yourself of the goal you're trying to achieve as you work. Don't jump into the solution right away. Start by asking questions and walk through the process. Try to answer these six questions, five W's and an H, one. Why am I building this too? Who am I building this for? Three, when and where will it be used for? What am I building? And five, how can I measure its success? If you find it helpful, write these questions down in whichever tool you prefer. This will be a reference to help you communicate your intent as you work through the white boarding exercise. Interviewers are generally happy to answer as many questions as I can for you. So don't be afraid to ask. If you feel unsure about your choice, you can state your assumptions and how you arrived at each conclusion. This could be an area for future exploration or usertesting. Tell your interviewers how you would test your assumptions. Explain which success metrics you would look for to see if your solution has adequately solved the business and users problems. Make sure you're asking questions upfront to get a good understanding for the problems you're trying to solve before moving into creating a solution. By having these questions answered, you will have honed in on solving the right problem to design around. Otherwise, you could have spent precious time pursuing a solution that doesn't address a real issue. This skill will take you far in your career and leadership will admire your ability to design for impact and value. Keep in mind you will not be solely judged on the final result. How you arrived at the proposed solution will hold equal weight. If not more, rationalizing your decisions effectively will become a common practice as a UX designer. In the next video, we'll discuss ways of practicing your white boarding exercise. 10. How to practice whiteboarding: Since most interviewers are now conducted virtually, you would likely be using software such as Miro to conduct the whiteboarding activity. Be sure to familiarize yourself with the tool before the interview. You will likely have 45 min to complete the challenge with 15 min at the end to discuss final results and ask your questions. Practice completing this task within this time-frame. Working and presenting with a specific time-frame will also become common practice as a UX designer. Try a challenge or two on your own, and then enlist the help of friends to help you practice. And they can pretend to be the interviewer. Have them start by giving you a prompt. They can answer questions as you go through the whiteboarding activity. Have them time you and remind you when 15 min or remaining, and then be sure to wrap up. Practice speaking aloud as you work and make sure to write your questions down in your workspace so others can reference them. Practice as many times as you can until you feel comfortable for your interview. Alright, so today we're going to be doing a whiteboarding activity, okay? And the prompt that I would like you to design is a tool for pet owners to find dog boarding. Okay. Let's see. I will just note tool for pet owners to find boarding. Yeah. Okay. We want to find boarding for their dogs. Okay. So we are exploring a tool for pets defined boarding further a dog. So I would want to understand why are we solving this tool? Perhaps users are going out of town. So let's talk about reasons, right? So this could be your reason. So going out of town, perhaps they are date night reasons. Perhaps there's just a doctor's appointment. So I might understand, you know, there could be a time implication. So going out of town as longer bit of time, let me get a new sticky note, different color. So reasons why there could be time. It could be long amount of time, long time. Let's just actually organized a different way. So multiple dates. It could be by hours. It could be one day. So maybe there's a scale, perhaps this could be different features. Let's see. So finding somebody so there may need to be a match. Perhaps it's like we understand who the user is and maybe we understand who the person is. So maybe they want to understand what the dog might be like. Yeah. So can they accommodate a large dog? When you say match, are you seeing a match between the owner and the person watching importing the dog or between the dog and the what kind of matches. So I think there could be both. So say an owner has no pets and they have no yard. So they would probably only be suitable to do a small dog. Perhaps they have a small dog and already, and the dog doesn't like bigger dog, so maybe it's a two-way street. So understanding where the accommodations at the boarding place and understanding the needs of the actual border could be something. So let me take another sticky note. This could be another kind of, perhaps it's a filter variant. So understanding boarding capabilities plus boarding need could be something we can consider. Also maybe there's an understanding for location. Okay? So location, distance from the border, from the board, any kind of group these over here. Let's see. What else could there be? Maybe there could just be some general information as far as personalities, maybe dog's personality. Okay. And it could be owner personality. Perhaps. It's an older individual who just wants to snuggle with little puppies and not really have the capability or means to walk a dog. Okay. And he's just having at their house, so host personality. And what type of a device or technology do you envision this tool being hosted on? I could see being hosted on either a web application. Perhaps it can be hosted on, Let's do web experience. So website, maybe mobile, mobile app. Let's see. What other questions can we ask for this problem-solving? So we understand who the users are, someone who is maybe going to town, going on date night are going Dr. appointment. We understand the boarding capabilities. So let's actually kinda expand on this a little bit. Space. Do they have a yard or not? Do the dogs like maybe there's also indications for pet needs. This might feel like a lot to go through, but your mind to learn crucial skills that UX designers need to excel in order to grow. The next video, we'll discuss what interviewers are looking for to ensure you're hitting a home run with this activity. 11. What UX interviewers are looking for in a whiteboarding exercise: Why boarding exercise is not just about how interesting or creative your ideas are. It's more so how you approach problem-solving while working with others, the team wants to see how you work, your strengths, and possible limitations. These are the questions that interviewers are likely evaluating you on. How do you solve problems? What is your process like? How well do you communicate? How do you collaborate with others? Do you think critically and ask probing questions? How do you work under pressure and with tight deadlines? In the next video, we will discuss the design challenge and how it differs from whiteboarding. Follow us to learn more. 12. SECTION 4 | What to expect from a UX design challenge: As part of the interview process, some companies ask applicants to do a take-home design challenge instead of a white boarding exercise is up to you if you want to do this or not. But there are few things to keep in mind before making a decision. If you don't do the challenge, you will be taking your name out of the running for the role that you've applied for. If you're interested in going forward, you should ask if there'll be compensation. Many design challenges are often unpaid work, while some companies do offer pay, many designers, including bath and myself, will tell you to never do work for free. Advocating for our talents and value is a collective practice in the design community. Junior and entry-level designers may feel that they must do them to get the job. It's best to get the full scope and understand what you're getting into before greedy, decide if doing unpaid work from particular company will benefit you. One benefit of the design challenge is the opportunity to showcase the design as a case study in your portfolio, design challenges vary widely from company to company. The scope of the challenge and the type of work will widely vary depending on the industry and the needs of the team. Some take-home challenges are expected to be done within one to 2 h, while some are allowed up to two weeks for completion. The vast majority of people actually spent a bit more time delivering work. That is to the quality that they would deliver for paid work. 13. How to do a UX design challenge: For the purposes of this course, will run through what your process for design challenge could look like. An example design challenge prompt you could get while interviewing for UX role could be redesigning the chat experience for Meta. Now, here's an approach overview you can follow to get started. Plan, research, and ideate. One plan. Start by making a plan. How much time do you have to deliver it, the final result, work backwards from there. If you have one week, think about how much time you can spend each day working on it. Let's say you have evenings and weekends free and you know, you can focus for about 3 h each night. That gives you roughly 21 h to deliver the final result. Number two, research. Now you can decide how you will spend your time, spend the most time upfront on research. So you're sure you know the problem space. Well before trying to come up with a solution, this will ensure your rationale is well-informed. This also gives you a time block to move forward with a direction and not spin your wheels too much. The research phase of the challenge, you can set it up like this. 3 h on product and competitive research, 3 h and user and Behavioral Research, and 1 h on synthesis. Be sure you're documenting everything and reference it often for a gut check to ensure you're pursuing the right solution. The process will aid in your talking points for the final presentation of the design challenge, think about what questions you want to answer through your UX research. This will give you a clear picture of the current experience. The ideal state should be. See what other comparable experiences exist and seeing what people are saying about them. You can look in places such as App Store reviews. You can spend time doing user interviews to understand users wants, needs, goals, motivations, pain points, frustrations, thoughts, feelings, and actions. You can conduct an ethnographic study and watch how people are using the existing tool to uncover opportunity areas. Once you feel your research is complete, you can move into the ideation phase. Your time, I look something like this. One-hour sketching. 2 h of wireframing and 2 h of visual design. Think about what features are needed to help your users complete their tasks and goals. How can you meet your users needs through your designs? Use all of your research to inform your decisions and it's okay to challenge your assumptions. Throughout this process. The design thinking process is continual and if it is common practice for UX designers, next, you will want to test what you've created to ensure you're solving the right problem for users. Your time might look something like this. 3 h for testing, one hours for revisions, usability issues which were uncovered in testing. The next thing you want to do is make your final polishes to your design based on feedback and testing. Pulled together a working prototype. You can use Figma Sketch or Adobe XD. Your final step is to document your process and findings in a slide deck which you can present to your interviewers. Walk them through how you arrived at your solution, at what key inputs helped inform your design thinking. Your time might look something like this. One, our final prototyping, two-hour process deck. And two-hour to practice presenting with friends, family members, or mentors. This high-level overview should provide you with enough guidance to get started in completing your design challenge. Okay, wow, we just went through three different entering a few scenarios that you may need to prepare for. Ap critiques, whiteboarding, and design challenges. We know it's a lot to take in. We've been there and how to prepare ourselves for all these interviews. When interviewing throughout our career, spend as much time as you need to master these skills are crucial to move to the final stages of your interviews. And skills are utilized daily on the job as a UX designer. Now that we've covered the big activities, do you need it for practice before meeting the team? Let's get into crushing those interviews. In the next section, we'll go over the typical interview process and what you can expect. 14. SECTION 5 | Intro to getting your UX interviews underway: How you interview is equally as important as what your work looks like. At this point, a recruiter or company wants to know your personality so they can get a sense for what it'll be like working with you. They want to be assured that you can backup the work showcased in your portfolio and be a valuable asset to the team. When prepping for your interview, make sure you understand each phase of the process and my pair for each activity and interview thoroughly. Some interview processes can be quite lengthy. So the sooner you can start prepping, the better. We will break down everything you need to know in this section. Up next, we will discuss the importance of knowing the company you're applying for. 15. Know the company you're applying for, in and out: When you have an interview confirmed, do as much research as possible to make sure you know the company, the team, the leadership, and the person interviewing you as much as possible. This will not only make you look prepared, but it will give you a good understanding of the company you will potentially be joining. When looking into the team members on LinkedIn and other social media profiles, explore the background. What is their philosophy on design? What is their educational background? What can you learn from them and what can you teach them? Having these questions answered, we'll help you build a connection more quickly and can humanize you. If you can create some interests beyond work that generally gives them a good impression and inside it to how your personality might fit the team. Come with questions prepared. The company wants to know that you're genuinely interested. Ask about the company culture, what challenges are facing, what their long-term goals are, and what a day in the life may look like. An interview is not only a way for you to see if your ideal for them, but the other way around too, their job needs to be a good fit for you as well. Before closing out the interview, we always like to ask if their hesitations thus far. This allows you an opportunity to backup any areas identified as weak points on the spot. You should provide them with more clarification to ease their worries. This makes you a strong candidate because it shows you have self-awareness, are curious and could take the back gracefully. Finally, don't forget to ask about next steps. You might even be able to tell how the interview went by how they respond. So stay alert. Most importantly, thank them for the time to speak with you and get to know you. 16. The typical UX interview process: The UX interview process tends to be somewhat lengthy and involved if your goal is to get a full-time role in your role as a UX designer, you will be handling a lot of large decisions over time. So finding the right candidate is important decision for the team. Selecting the right candidate for a team is important even when considering freelance or contracting work. However, the interview process may be more abbreviated than that of a full-time salaried role. In these cases, your expertise may be needed for a shorter time. Thus, it's not as big of a commitment for the employer. A typical interview process may unfold as follows. One, the first round will often be phone screening with a recruiter or HR, which typically lasts around 30 min. You will be asked about your background experience. This is where you get to know more about the rules or roles available, the company, and what the team's needs are. You will want to summarize your experience and educational background to allow the recruiter to see if you'd be worth passing on to the hiring manager. Tried to share as many details as possible that align with the job description during the phone screening. Make sure you're being succinct. Feel free to practice your talking points with someone beforehand to get feedback about your delivery. Expected compensation requirements may come up as well. But as the saying goes, whoever throws out a number of first, generally loses its best to avoid stating a number at this point. That way you have leveraged down the road to negotiate for total compensation, some of which may not be salary. Instead, ask about what a typical salary ranges for the level that you're applying for. This will give you a chance to do some research and see if the range is competitive. Remember to stay positive and thank them for their time. The next interview is typically a phone interview with the designers are hiring managers. It can sometimes be a video call, so be paired for both. Quite often this will be a 30-minute chat with the manager of the team. You'll be working under this, a chance for you to get to know the team and for you to brag a bit about your accomplishments. The next interview is typically where you will share your portfolio presentation you've created. This round can last from 1 h and up to six depending on the company. Some companies want to do an on-site or a series of panel interviews, which can take nearly a full day due to COVID and remote work becoming commonly accepted. The majority of these interviews will be done virtually. Be prepared to turn on your camera with a strong Wi-Fi connection. Most likely there'll be various members of the team ranging from designers to project managers and more. This is a great opportunity to learn about the team you'll be working with. You will potentially do a portfolio review in a series of one-on-one interviews with members of the team and leadership. The final round is often panel interviews. This is where you will meet one-on-one with a few of the members of the team so they can ask more specific questions and make sure you are a good fit. You will want to have questions prepared to ask them to ensure the company and the team is a good fit for you to. Culture fit is highly important. Hopefully, these rounds of interviews ends with you getting an offer if you decide the company team or good fit and you wish to accept. This is when you can negotiate for your total compensation including salary, PTO, stock, options and bonuses. Do your research and know the range you want for total compensation package. Think of total compensation as salary plus benefits. As a general rule of thumb. Always negotiate. You never get we don't ask for. So give it a shot. Once you've done your research and come back with a total compensation range, makes sure to let them know that you based your range on current market trends. In the next video, we'll go through the interview questions to ask and to prepare for. 17. UX interview questions to ask and to prepare: When prepping for an interview, it can be tough to anticipate which questions interviewers will ask you with so many to choose from. How do you plan to prepare for them all? Let's jump right in. Interviewers often utilize the star method to ask questions, to understand how you handled behavioral situations and previous roles. What exactly is the star method? It is an interview method that gives you a straight forward format to tell a story using situation, task, action, and result. Using this method gives your interviewer insight into how you may operate within a new team. Star method questions often start like, tell me about a time when. What do you do? When? Have you ever give me an example of describe a look for these triggers and apply the star framework for questions that use the star method, you should answer it using the following framework. Situation, set the scene and give the necessary detail of your example. Task. Describe what your responsibility was in that situation. Action. Explain exactly what steps you took to address it. We saw, share what outcomes your actions achieved. If you remember the acronym, it'll help you break down your answer and paint a picture for your hiring manager. Here are some typical questions you may be asked in an interview. Company-specific can run as follows. Why are you interested in this role? What products would you like to work on and why? What do you know about the product offerings? How does the work you've done set you up for success in this new role. Design background questions could run as follows. What does design thinking to you? What is your definition of UX design? Where do you find design inspiration? What does your design process look like? What are your strengths and weaknesses? What is your preferred way of working? Tell us about your most successful projects and what made it successful. Tell us about a UX project that did not go as planned. How did you manage it? Where do you see yourself in five years? What are some of the biggest challenges you have faced as a UX designer? Here are some questions you can ask your interviewer. Why do you like to work here? Can you describe a typical workweek? What is the team structure? What does the company culture look like? What are the benefits? What are some of the big picture challenges the company is facing? What does success look like for this role? What are the biggest goals this role is to accomplish in 30, 60, or 90 days. How will this role contribute to the team? What are the most important skills for someone in this role? Answering these questions helps understand the details of the role. You want to know if it's a good culture fit and ensure the company is going to support your long-term growth in your career as a UX designer. As always, don't forget to practice. Find someone who can act as the interviewer and ask questions. So you prepared to answer them articulately. The last thing you want is to be caught off guard and fumble through your responses. You can never be too prepared. So practice as much as possible. You can even write out questions and responses and record yourself answering them. Then replay the video and note where you need to make adjustments. If you'd like, help prepping for your upcoming interviews. You can book time with Jennifer or Beth myself. Now that you have practiced on, are fully prepared for upcoming interviews. And the next video, we'll discuss the interview followup. 18. Interview dos dont's : Currently, most interviews are being held on Zoom Teams or Google Hangouts. Be sure to test your connection to Wi-Fi and both your audio and video before your scheduled start time. Prep your space with things to take notes and make sure to have notes nearby of things you want to remember to cover during your discussion. We understand that many of us are working from home, but do look around to ensure that your space is tidy and gives a positive first impression. Be cautious of what you eat and drink prior to interview. E.g. too much coffee might make you jittery. Not eating food can make you feel lightheaded because everyone is different. We suggest doing what's going to make you feel and perform your best. Also be sure to visit the restroom beforehand. You don't get distracted or feel uncomfortable during the call. To build a little confidence, try power poses, stretching, and shake off those jitters. When interviewing, remember, you're human. Have a little fun and stay relaxed. Let your personality shine. An interviewer as just interested in who you are as they are in your background and expertise. It's okay to talk about your hobbies outside of work. When discussing your experience, try to bring in metrics that show how your work contributed to the company's success. Explain how you solve problems for each company and why your solutions were successful. Even though you will not be physically present, your tire is so reflection of you as a professional. Be sure to look the part of the job that you want. Come dressed to give the team the impression that you are polished and ready to get to work. Here are some examples of outputs you can wear. Next up, we will cover what to do post interview, and we'll touch on the follow-up. And finally, last apps. 19. Interview follow-up: You are almost there. This is the one and final step before getting that coveted job offer. Make sure you think the interviewer or interviewers for their time in a follow-up email about 24 h after interview. If you asked about hesitations they may have about your candidacy during the interview, hopefully you've had time to think about the best way to diminish those hesitations through examples of your work. Attach or explain examples of how you can bring value to the team. Perhaps you didn't present specific work or highlight your problem-solving the best way. You can address those pain points and a follow-up e-mail as they still may be in the decision-making process. Be courteous and gracious. Think that for considering your candidacy and for taking the time to get to know you, reiterate your interest and send away fingers crossed, they reach back out to you with that sweet, sweet offer letter. Okay. We're in the home stretch. Last, but certainly not least, we're going to wrap up and talk about compensation and the fine art of negotiating. 20. SECTION 6 | Art of negotiation: You got a job offer and you're close to getting that UX design rule. Pause. Ux is giving you a standing ovation. Weight. Don't just sign the first offer that comes your way. Everything in life is negotiable, especially your compensation. Politely thank them for the offer and ask them time for review. Do not skip this step. Even if you love the offer that they've given you, take time to see if you can move the needle. This is an opportunity to ensure you're getting what you need to keep you happy and stay with the company. Do your homework. What are similar job titles, ranks, and company sizes in your area getting paid? Did they get stock options? How much does PTO to the offer parental leave. What is the furrow one k match percentage. Do you want to work in an office halftime, or remote full-time? A few good sources for salary information are leveled at FYI, payscale.com, salary.com built in Austin or other similar sites for whichever city you live in, your offer should be competitive all around for your total compensation, not just for your salary. We want you to know that this is a two-way street and should be win-win for both you and the employer. Many large reputable companies are fighting for talent. And in doing so, offering very compelling compensation packages. Make sure that your offer package aligns with what others are receiving, as well as the lifestyle you want to live. 21. SECTION 7 | UX interview recap: In this class, we prepared you to be successful in interviews, explain app critiques, whiteboarding challenges, design challenges, as well as how to negotiate your pay. We hope you feel confident and ready to crush your interviews. Ultimately also getting a job in UX, there's a lot to learn in order to get your ideal job in UX, but the reward makes it worth it, or at least we think so. We loved this field and all the wonderful people who work in it. And now hopefully including you. We both found it extremely rewarding that in the UX industry everyone is empathetic and helpful, providing others with the support that they need to grow. It's the collective nature that makes a UX industry so special. We are happy to be part of it and educate others on how to join the community as well. Thank you for allowing us to do what we love and continuing to inspire others. Please keep us updated on your success. We love to know that we have helped our UX peers thrive. Thank you for watching until next time from Beth and Jennifer with Pasi UX