what interview questions should you ask of a user experience (ux) developer/designer

Question

We are hiring a UX consultant, had a broadstrokes session with the company, liked their work, think the candidates are ok and now want a more concentrated interview with the specific UX consultant that will be embedded into the scrum team.

What questions should be asking that could weed out any dead weight candidates.

Thanks.

Solution 1

Ask Tog has a good Quiz. I'd also ask stuff on the Gestalt principles, but that's probably because I have a masters degree in HCI (as in that might be a bit academic). That said Gestalt principles are very important especially for things like Form design.

I guess also you could ask them what their favourite book on UX design are, if they can't list any that would be very odd to me.

Solution 2

Personal Experience A good UX practitioner should be taking an interest in the things they use personally. I would ask them what they use personally - obvious technology items like phone and websites, and also less obvious things like kitchen appliances and vending machines. If a UX candidate can't tell me what they observed in their day so far (e.g. the car or public transport they used to get to the interview), that's a good way to weed out the dead weight right there.

Practical Problems As with programming, the best way to assess someone is give them a real-world problem you're facing (or faced) and see how they deal with it. Their thought processes are more important than the answer.

Solution 3

I am a UI Designer/Developer and once I gave an interview to Verizon for UX Designer position. By the way, it was a phone interview. I never worked as UX Designer before. The person who interviewed me asked me about my past work experiences, skill sets and asked me if have contributed as UX designer before. With regards to technical question, he actually sent me a document which had some brief information (part of an application) and then a small interface (it was like a table with some graphic based information, and based on this information, the call center people would respond to user request). I was asked to study this table carefully and then i was given 24 hour timefame to suggest a changed table/design and was asked to explain why would i suggest those changes. Just by looking at that single page document, I didn't understand the problem itself and didn't know what to suggest. I spent 23 hours just looking at the problem and on the 24th hour I did make a suggestion and send them my reply. But didn't work ..... i never heard back from Verizon.

As a UI Designer, I have worked wiith lots of UX Designer and all I know about UX design is that you have to understand the problem very carefully. You need to look for all posible solutions and use the one that would best satisfies the usesr needs. And then you must know how to create wireframes.