interview image

Interviewing Designers and PMs: The Design Challenge

Giff Constable design, management, product management

It’s really hard to interview product designers and product managers. The most effective step I added to my cycles several years ago is a design challenge.

The challenges themselves are a 2-hour take-home challenge, and then a 1-hour presentation with cross-functional members of the team. Because of the time commitment, it is best saved for late in the interview cycle. Why take-home? Because I don’t think asking people to think on their feet is an accurate simulation of how we work, and creates an unfair bias for/against certain personality types.

With the design challenge, you get exposure to several big questions about a candidate:

  • how do they think through product design?
  • can they effectively time-box a problem?
  • are they comfortable sketching and sharing a rough sketch?
  • can they coherently communicate their ideas and lead a room?
  • can they handle questions and effectively riff / collaborate with the group?

For product managers, I’m often looking to get a sense of their product design chops and creativity. I’ve found that it’s easier to understand strategic, analytical and process chops in more classic interviews, but if I only wanted analytical and process skills, I’d hire a technical project manager. You might be looking for something else in a PM, and so alter the design prompt for your purpose. For product designers, I’m trying to get a sense of their interaction design thought process. For both, I’m looking to get a taste of their communication and collaboration styles.

I’m always adjusting and improving these, but below I’ll share examples, a bit more color commentary, and some tips for your colleagues who will join you in the presentation portion.

Designer Example

Design Challenge Prompt (for designers)

Step 1: Design (choose one, time box this to 2 hours)

  • Option 1: Choose a product you have used in the last year that has a section, screen or flow where you thought to yourself, “this is an interesting problem, but their solution has too much complexity.” Take a stab at redesigning it — sketches/wireframes only — and walk us through your thought process.
  • Option 2: Imagine you were starting a company to connect aspiring leaders people to executive coaches. Sketch out what a new user (on the leader side) might experience — sketch/wireframe only — and walk us through your thought process. You can skip any basic registration stuff and jump to where things get interesting.

Presentation
We’ll schedule a 1-hour meeting for you to share your ideas with a few people on our product team. Our goal is to keep it conversational and interactive.

Clarifications

  • While it is useful to understand how someone thinks about a customer, a problem, and a space, the most important thing for us in this exercise is to understand how you think about interaction design and how you communicate your ideas.
  • Please time-box the design portion to 2 hours. Seriously. We’re not looking for, and do not expect, a perfect solution grounded in lots of research.
  • Rough sketches are expected and perfectly fine. This is not a visual design challenge. They also don’t have to be digital — photos of pencil sketches are welcome.
  • If you have any questions or want clarification, do not hesitate to reach out to us.

Additional Commentary

  • Make the options relevant to your business, but do not to ask the candidate to work on your actual product — not unless you plan on paying them
  • It’s also important to reinforce that this should be time-boxed. You’re not looking for perfection, deep research, or polish.
  • I ask for wireframe sketches from both types of candidates, but the prompt for PMs tends to be slightly different, and requires more clarifications to keep the scope from exploding. I’ll put an example for PMs at the bottom.
  • These exercises are for junior-to-senior candidates. For hiring at the VP level, I prefer to have the candidate pick a topic about our craft — something of their own choosing — and then come teach and interact with the team for an hour.

Notes for Your Colleagues in the Room

When your colleagues join you for the presentation portion, they should know the following:

  • They should make the candidate feel welcome. The person might be nervous. Try to disarm that and make it a safe space. You and your team should not look or sound judgmental. Smile. Engage.
  • Everyone should know what the prompt was and the very tight time constraints involved. It’s worth reframing this at the start of the session before the candidate begins their presentation.
  • Make sure your colleagues know that you’re not looking for perfect solutions, but rather a peek into how someone thinks, communicates, and collaborates.
  • They can and should ask hard questions, but do so in a friendly way. They should try to engage the candidate in a mini-brainstorm, just as you might with a colleague. (In person, I’ll often try to create an opportunity to get the person up at the whiteboard with me)

PM Example

Design Challenge Prompt (for PMs)

Step 1: Design (choose one, time box this to 2 hours)

  • Option 1 (open-ended): Pick an unsolved problem that has been bugging you, and design your own solution to it. Make sure you help us understand who you are targeting, as well as how would try to solve the problem. A viable business model is not required, since this is a product challenge, not an entrepreneurship challenge!  
  • Option 2 (demonstrate domain knowledge): We’re in the XYZ industry, and while we solve a specific problem, our customers have many challenges. What’s a different problem you think needs solving, and how would you solve it? Sketch out just a portion of your application (a few screens, or a flow if online/offline).

For both prompts, you only need to sketch out a portion of your application/solution (a few screens, or a flow if online/offline). Choose a portion that feels interesting and at the heart of the problem.

Presentation
We’ll schedule a 1-hour meeting for you to share your ideas with a few people on our product team. Our goal is to keep it conversational and interactive.

Clarifications

  • While it is useful to understand how someone thinks about a customer, a problem, and a space, the most important thing for us in this exercise is to understand how you think creatively as a product designer and how you communicate your ideas.
  • Please time-box the design portion to 2 hours. Seriously. Make choices that make this possible and feel free to explain those choices. After all, scoping is an important PM skill!
  • Rough sketches are expected and perfectly fine. They also don’t have to be digital — photos of pencil sketches are welcome.
  • We’re not expecting you to have done user research or business modeling, although if you have ideas about what you *might* do given the time, that can be interesting to discuss.
  • If you have any questions or want clarification, do not hesitate to reach out to us.

Top image from @wocintechchat on Unsplash