Ask questions on a design job interview, then move to a solution

When interviewing for a design position, I expect a candidate to ask many questions before starting to go into solution.

Focusing on output too early in the design process usually leads to a suboptimal solution, a "local maximum" so to speak, given the designer’s limited knowledge about the business problem.

Designers love the romance of the medium. Yet the designer’s first duty is to go find out what to design by performing just enough research.

My favourite definitions of design is by Jared Spool: "Design is rendering of intent". But how would you render the intent if you don’t know what it is? A design starts by getting enough information: call it "research", "product discovery", "open conversations", "questionnaire", "design workshop" - do it remotely or in direct conversation, use Zoom, Slack or smoke signals. It doesn’t matter, as long as you collect enough information about the problem.

And you know you’ve collected "enough" information when you present your understanding of the problem to the customer. It can be in an hour, in a week, in a month or longer - depending on the complexity of the problem. Only after that do you start to design. Slow down earlier to speed up later. Otherwise you will come up with the perfectly crafted product that no one will use since there is no utility nor value in it.

At the end of the day, design is communication, not decoration.

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