Most design interviews are a portfolio walkthrough followed by “so what’s your process?” You get a rehearsed answer, everyone nods, and you learn very little. The questions below are the ones that actually separate designers who make decisions from designers who make deliverables.
You will not use all of them. Pick six or seven that match what you are hiring for, and follow up on anything vague. The follow-up is where the information is.
About the work they have done
1. Walk me through a project where the first direction was wrong. The single most useful question in the list. You are listening for how they noticed, what they did, and whether they can describe being wrong without defensiveness. Anyone with real shipping experience has this story. A designer who does not is either very junior or editing heavily.
2. What did you cut from this project, and why? Design is mostly deciding what not to build. Someone who can name what they removed was involved in scoping, not just execution.
3. Which part of this work are you least happy with? Tests self-assessment and honesty at once. Good answers are specific and unprompted: a flow they would restructure, a component that got messy. “Nothing really” is an answer.
4. What happened after launch? Did anyone use it? Did the numbers move? Designers who stay connected to outcomes think differently from designers who hand off and move on. If they do not know, ask whether anyone told them, which tells you about the environment they came from.
5. What was your actual contribution here? Portfolio work is often collaborative and sometimes borrowed. This is a fair question and the answer should be immediate and specific.
About how they think
6. How would you approach our problem in the first two weeks? You are not looking for the right answer, because they do not have enough context yet. You are looking for whether they start by asking questions or by proposing solutions.
7. What would you need from us to do this well? Strong designers have requirements: access to users, a decision-maker, existing analytics, real content. Someone who needs nothing has not thought about it.
8. How do you decide between two directions you both like? Listen for something other than taste. Testing, the constraint it satisfies, what it costs to build, how it holds up as content grows.
9. When have you disagreed with a client or PM, and what happened? You are hiring judgment. If they always defer, you are paying senior rates for execution. If they always win, they may be difficult. You want someone who can describe disagreeing well.
10. What do you do when there is no time for research? Which is most of the time. Practical answers involve analytics, support tickets, sales calls, competitor teardowns, or shipping something small to find out. Purists who say they cannot work that way will struggle in most companies.
About craft
11. Show me the empty, loading and error states from a real project. Ask to see them on screen. This is the fastest test of whether someone designs products or pictures of products.
12. How do you handle accessibility? Concrete answers mention contrast ratios, focus order, target sizes, keyboard navigation, testing with a screen reader. “I follow best practices” means no.
13. How do you name and structure your files? Unglamorous and highly predictive. Whoever inherits the file lives with the answer, and it correlates strongly with how someone thinks about systems.
14. What do you hand to developers, and how do you handle questions during build? Design that ends at the file gets reinterpreted. You want someone who expects to stay available while it is built.
15. How do you design for content you do not control? Long titles, missing images, twelve items instead of three. The answer reveals whether they have shipped anything that survived contact with a CMS.
About working together
16. How do you prefer to receive feedback? Sets expectations both ways and surfaces anyone who cannot take it.
17. What does a bad client look like to you? Slightly risky, very revealing. Reasonable answers involve unclear decision-making, feedback by committee, or changing direction after sign-off. Watch for anyone who describes all past clients as the problem.
Questions worth skipping
- “What’s your design process?” Everyone recites the same five stages. Ask about a specific project instead.
- “Where do you see yourself in five years?” Tells you nothing about the work.
- “What’s your favourite app and why?” Fine as small talk, useless as signal.
- Unpaid take-home tests. Not a question, but worth stating: experienced designers decline these, so you filter out the people you most want. A short paid exercise is better on every axis.
What good answers have in common
They are specific. They include a constraint, a trade-off, or something that went wrong. They mention other people by role, because real projects involve engineers and stakeholders. And they occasionally include “I don’t know”, which after enough interviews starts to sound like confidence.
Frequently asked questions
How long should a design interview be?
One hour is enough for a portfolio walkthrough and four or five real questions. If you need more, do a second short call rather than a two-hour marathon, which mostly tests stamina.
Should I ask for a test project?
A small paid exercise, two to four hours, on something close to your real work is the best predictor you can get. Pay for it and give real context. Unpaid spec work filters out the best candidates.
Should a developer sit in on the interview?
If you can spare one, yes, for the craft questions. Developers ask better follow-ups about states, edge cases and handoff than most hiring managers do.
What if I do not know enough about design to judge the answers?
You know more than you think. Ask them to explain a decision until you understand it. A designer who cannot explain their reasoning to a non-designer will have the same problem with your whole team.
How do I check they can do the visual side too?
Ask for a component library or style guide rather than finished screens. Screens can be lucky, systems cannot. If you are unsure how the two disciplines split, see UI vs UX designer.
Before you start interviewing
Know your budget band and engagement model first, because they change who is worth talking to. I have written up what a UI/UX designer costs and, if you are looking offshore, how to hire a UI/UX designer in the Philippines. You can also just ask me, whether or not I am the right fit for the project.
Planning a website or product design project?