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3 steps to Crush a UX Whiteboard Challenge
The interview process for UX designers terrifies most juniors and even midlevel designers. And why shouldn’t it? Every company that hires UX designers seems to have a different process based on their company’s UX maturity, but one test that stands above the rest is the whiteboard challenge.
Long feared and despised in coding interviews, the UX whiteboard challenge has made its way to UX interviews and doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. While it can be stressful, it’s also an incredible way to differentiate yourself from the other candidates and make a huge impression on the hiring committee (and face it, there are no hiring managers anymore, just massive committees of people who hire, which is why every application requires 7 rounds of interviews).
To avoid looking like a first year kindergarten teacher on Valium, there’s a few easy tips you can take into account to ensure your whiteboard challenge flows smoothly.
1. Interrogate the interviewer.
While you don’t need to handcuff them to a table or offer them a cigarette, it’s important to get as many answers as you need out of them. Before you even go into the interview, try writing down five or six questions that will fit any challenge.
Be prepared to use this information. Some standard questions are things like “what is our standard customer profile? Who is the primary user? What problems will this product solve?” There are some questions that might be deeper than the interviewer expected, but don’t worry too much about those. Some whiteboard interviewees seem terrified to ask too many questions. You should allot 20–30% of your time to discussing the problem fully. Feel free to take notes on the whiteboard.
2. Order yourself.
Try splitting whiteboard notes into three or four sections. The four I use are “Customer, problem, context, steps.” For customer, I construct a basic customer profile in three or four sentences. For problem, I write down what problem currently exists and how the new product will fix this problem. For example, if the interviewer asks me to create an interface for an automated car wash, I would express the problem as people needing to select a car wash quickly in a line of cars. A note: It’s good…
