Product design interview questions worth asking

Why most design questions don't discriminate

“Walk me through your process.” “Tell me about a project you're proud of.” “How do you handle feedback?” Every candidate has an answer ready, and it's roughly the same answer, because the questions are the same everywhere and the internet has told everyone what to say.

A question discriminates when the answer can't be prepared in advance. Either it requires lived information about a particular project, or it puts the candidate in a situation and watches what they do.

Questions about judgment

These four get closest to what you're hiring for. Ask them about a specific project rather than in the abstract.

• “Tell me about a design decision you made that turned out to be wrong. How did you find out?” It requires having held a belief, shipped it, and received contradicting evidence over time. A case study can't answer it.
• “What did the brief say before you changed it?” If they never changed a brief, that's the answer. If they did, you learn how they reframe.
• “What did you argue for and lose?” It shows whether they have opinions, and how they behave when overruled.
• “What is still broken in that product because of a decision you made?” Strong candidates answer immediately. It's the hardest question on this list to fake.

Questions about prioritisation

The fastest way to see seniority is to take resources away and watch what the candidate protects.

• “You have two weeks of one engineer instead of eight. What do you build?” Juniors cut polish. Seniors cut scope and say what they're sacrificing.
• “What did you choose not to do on that project, and why?” This tests whether they think in trade-offs or in features.
• “Which single metric would you move, and by how much?” One number with a magnitude means outcome thinking. Six metrics means a dashboard.

Questions about working with other people

Ask for the artefact rather than the self-description. “How do you handle disagreement?” invites a rehearsed answer; “write me the message” doesn't.

• “An executive insists on a solution the data doesn't support. Write me the reply you'd send.” Capitulating fails, and so does digging in. Doing it well means reframing towards their goal and proposing a cheap test.
• “Engineering says your approach is impossible this quarter. What now?” Look for a second gear rather than a negotiation over the deadline.
• “Explain this decision to someone in operations, in four lines, with no design vocabulary.” You get a writing sample produced under a real constraint.

Questions about self-awareness

Ask these last, when they're invested in what they've described. The comfortable version of this question tells you nothing; the pointed version tells you a lot.

• “What's the weakest part of what you've just described, and how would you check it?” Textbook answers (“we'd validate with users”) score low because they're true of everything.
• “What would someone who disagreed with this decision say?” Strong candidates can argue the other side properly. Weak ones straw-man it.

Four questions to stop asking

Each of these feels probing and measures nothing useful.

• “Walk me through your process.” Everyone has memorised a double diamond.
• “What's your favourite app and why?” It measures taste and fluency with opinions, and tells you little about judgment.
• “Where do you see yourself in five years?” It measures interview preparation.
• “Design a lift for me.” It measures comfort performing under artificial pressure, which isn't the job unless you're hiring for interviews.

Better questions still need controlled conditions

Even good questions are hard to compare when each candidate answers about a different project, at a different level of detail, with a different interviewer having a different day.

If you can, ask everyone the same questions about the same situation. That one change does more for your decision quality than any improvement to the questions themselves.

Frequently asked

How many questions should a design interview have?

Fewer than you think. Four or five questions explored properly tell you more than twelve asked shallowly, because the useful information comes out in the follow-up. Plan for at least one follow-up per question.

Should the hiring manager or a designer ask these?

Ideally a designer, but a non-designer can ask all of the judgment and prioritisation questions and read the answers perfectly well. The ones that need a designer are about craft, and those are the easiest to verify separately.