The interview process for the UI designer

Palantir Technologies is an IT-tech company that provides analysis, integration, and visualization of various data. In the company, front-end engineers and back-end engineers have the same interview process, and front-end engineers also need a certain programming base. The company's technology blog Palantir Teckblog has published a blog post "The UI Design Interview", introduced the company interview front-end designers process and some experience. The article was compiled by CSDN, which reads as follows:

Our front-end engineers and back-end engineers have the same interview process, such as test algorithms and coding. Because the front-end engineers want to develop the customer-oriented part of the system, we hope that candidates have a certain programming base. Start talking about our interview process now.

Why design an interview specifically for a design engineer?

The reason why I like to stay in Palantir's front-end engineering team is because we can participate in the process of designing and implementing the UI interface of the product. Engineers can work with other engineers and designers in the design of the product, and we can discuss our ideas openly. A UI designer's interview should mimic this collaborative design and discussion process. This means that during the interview process, you will be asked to design or evaluate one or two UI designs, while testing your ability to collaborate and discuss.

Here are some helpful tips to keep in mind when dealing with design issues in an interview.

It's all for the user.

The user is the arbiter of the success of any interface. If the user can simply, efficiently and intuitively lead the task easily, then what we have done is successful. So we have to do at any stage of design to the user in mind.

The easiest mistake we made before designing was to think of ourselves as a user. Working with a computer is a lonely job, and it's easy to forget that everyone experiences a user interface in a different way. With the interface you have designed, users can become a complete novice or a skilled system administrator.

It's important to imagine what users like. First create a user, including his name, age, and occupation. Then ask yourself the following questions:

Under what circumstances will users use this feature? At work, at home, or in front of a 10-step TV?

Have they used a similar interface before?

What is their ability to use the computer? Do they copy, paste? Will you open the Content menu?

When adding new features to an interface, first draw a sketch for the primary control (buttons, lists, text boxes). Then simulate how the user uses the feature.

When drawing up your imaginary interface, please put yourself in your shoes for the user to think about. At this point you can ask yourself the following several questions:

What can they do when they want to do X?

How do they find this feature?

What do they want to do next?

What is the frequency of their doing X?

What might happen once X fails?

Such a problem. Ask yourself these questions, consider what impact these issues can have on your design, and make changes in your design.

Interviewing is a very important interactive process.

Some interviewees are embarrassed to refute the interviewer. In fact, we prefer the opposite view. If you have any good ideas, you might as well express them. I prefer to refute my interviewer as long as he can support his point of view through debate and story. The more clearly you describe your point of view, the better.

Be creative, but don't redesign existing features

I've seen a lot of interviewers fall into a very awkward design trap just to show some very simple data. If you have a set of data, use the list to show them. In general, familiarity with UI knowledge is helpful because they have solved many of the design challenges.

You design the interface to let users quickly and easily complete the task, or stop the interface design. Do not add some insignificant functionality to the entire user interface. As Deiter Rams famously said, "The simpler the good design, the better." This applies not only to interface design but also to product design.

If you want to quickly and easily determine the simplicity of a new addition, just count the number of clicks a user needs to click to complete the task. If the user must be transferred from the mouse to the keyboard, convert the count to two.

How to be prepared

If you have ever done design work and have a team experience, we welcome you and you will do better. If you have no experience, here are a few ways to help you improve your design skills:

If you are still in school, you are advised to take more project-based courses. This will give you more practical design experience.

Use every opportunity to develop your design concept. Keep asking yourself: "How can you design it differently? How do you design it better?" The more you ask yourself, the more they become unconscious, natural behavior. Soon you will want to know more about the design of everything in your daily life.

Really design something and focus on the UI.

Ask someone to comment on your work. Let people with design experience look at your designs and they will point out problems you have never found.

Read more books about Ui/ux/hci/infoviz. Now there are plenty of good bookcase and blogs. Like Alan Cooper's about face, Stephen Few's now and see It and Steve Krug's Don t make Me look worth reading.

Via:the UI Design Interview

Article Source: csdn.net