Job interviews for UX designers often include a

practical demonstration. Whiteboard interviews

are a popular way of conducting these
demonstrations. Whiteboard interviews
get their name from the erasable writing surfaces that are used for teaching
and planning that you see in so many
classrooms and offices. During a whiteboard interview, you'll be given a
design problem to solve in real time using a whiteboard,
so that interviewers can observe and learn
about how you work. This kind of exercise
is a chance for interviewers to watch
you work in action, which can help them
assess your knowledge, thought process, design capabilities, and
communication skills. Usually, as you come up with design solutions
on the whiteboard, interviewers will ask
questions about your process. Interviewers might even join you on the whiteboard as
they
would with a colleague. The goal of this exercise is to simulate a real-world
work experience. The interviewers
want to put you in a situation that tests how
you engage with colleagues, manage the stress involved
with questions and debate, and respond to the pressure of designing based on
constraints they'll provide. A whiteboard interview might be one-on-one with an
interviewer or with a panel of
interviewers from different parts of the
team that you'd be joining. You might be wondering, how can I prepare for a
whiteboard interview? Well, first, do your research
before the interview. Any problem given to you during a whiteboard
interview has to be limited enough for you to make meaningful progress in
a short amount of time. But it also needs to
be open and ambiguous enough to allow for your unique perspective
to come through. Make the most of sites like
Indeed or Glassdoor to research examples of
whiteboard interviews and get a sense for
what they're like. There are tons of examples of whiteboard interview
questions online. Remember the prompt
generator from Sharpen that you used to select
your portfolio projects? All of those prompts
are similar to whiteboard interview cases
you might be asked to design. Second, practice thinking aloud. During a whiteboard
interview, you'll need to describe each decision you make and
explain your reasoning. Remember, interviewers want to understand your thinking
process, so you need to share
what's on your mind. Your ultimate goal is to be
able to accurately describe your thoughts without
getting lost in the details. Thinking aloud can feel a
little awkward at first, so it takes a lot of practice. A great way to check how
well
you can think aloud is to practice answering a
whiteboard interview question and record yourself. Then review the video to check
whether your logic and
explanations are clear. The third tip I'll
share to help you ace your whiteboard interview
is to clarify your task. Pay careful attention to
what's being asked of you. After an interviewer
gives you your task, repeat it back to them to be sure you understand
the instructions, the goal, and the constraints. This is also where you
can ask for clarification before you get
started to make sure you fully understand
the challenge. These types of
interviews often create ambiguous conditions on purpose to test how candidates
react. After you receive
the design task, start whiteboarding
your design process where you feel most comfortable. For example, if you
identify a shortcut in the research information provided at the start of the
interview, don't worry about
following every step of the design process we've
shown in this course. While you often want
to go in the order of the design process -- empathize, define, ideate,
prototype, test -- you don't always have to follow this process from
beginning to end. Remember, at any point during
the whiteboard interview, you can ask questions. If you want to know
about use cases, edge cases, or even the general demographics
of your target users, it's best to ask questions and adjust your
design from there. Here's an insider tip from my perspective as an interviewer: One
of the most important
questions to ask is to clarify
who the user is. That's a great place to start
your whiteboard exercise. Last but not least,
always be confident. During a whiteboard
exercise, you're in your element. Everything you've learned
throughout this program will give you the tools you
need to solve these problems. You get to take the design
process you've spent so much time practicing
and put it into action. Keep in mind, you wouldn't
have gotten this far into the interview process if the employer wasn't
interested in you, your skills, and your creativity. Use this time to wow them. You
now know a few tips
and tricks to help you ace a whiteboard interview.
You've got this! There's one last thing that I think might help you prepare. Let's
discuss the
criteria upon which your whiteboard exercise
will be evaluated. While each interviewer
is totally unique, here's a list of common
questions that your interviewers might be asking themselves during your whiteboard
interview. What questions did they
ask before starting? Do they know the user
they're designing for? Does this product design
fit the guidelines given? Do they think too independently, or do they rely too much
on the team's help? Are they truly brainstorming or are they focusing
only on one design? Are they addressing the core
problem of the exercise? How well do they
communicate as they design? Is this someone who can
work well on a team? I know that these
whiteboard interviews can feel intimidating, but I can assure you that
there's nothing to worry about. Explaining your design process
is something that you'll do throughout your work and
career as a UX designer. In the real world,
it's important for team members to know
the thinking behind each other's designs
so they can more easily collaborate and
decide on design solutions. It's important to
feel comfortable describing your thought
process while designing, both for interviews and beyond. Now that you're starting
to get the hang of the whiteboard
interview process, let's talk about take-home
design exercises. During a take-home
design exercise, you'll follow a similar process as a whiteboard interview, but you
will do the work on your own and from the comfort
of your own home. You might have anywhere from
12 hours to multiple days to come up with ideas for a design
based on a specific prompt. Just like with a
whiteboard exercise, you want to pay careful
attention to what's being asked of you and
clarify the task if needed. Read the instructions
thoroughly and carefully. After the take-home
design exercise ends, you should be ready to
present your design solution. In many cases, you
will be asked to present your take-home
design exercise as part of your second round of
interviews or in front of a panel of interviewers.
And that's it. Using what you've
learned this far, you should be ready to handle almost any type of
interview you come across. Before moving on to the
final part of this course, take some time to
prepare for interviews. The more time and effort
that you put into preparing, the better the interview will go.