So You Need a Designer
1. It is hard to find the designer you need with the same job posting
- Job postings that repeatedly mention Figma skills and years of experience do not reveal the expertise the team actually needs
- It is easy to bundle different capabilities such as UI, user research, information architecture, and content design under a single “UX designer” title
- It is becoming harder to judge skill from a finished portfolio alone
- Since AI can quickly create convincing mockups, personas, and journey maps, you need to check the judgment process behind the output rather than the output itself
2. Check real-time judgment rather than output
- Like hiring a product manager, look at the process of interpreting problems and making decisions through conversation
- Product judgment: the ability to explain what was not chosen to be built and what trade-offs were accepted
- Context understanding: the ability to ask the necessary questions without accepting the given problem and decision-making process as-is
- Go beyond screen production and also check systems and validation methods
- Interface and systems thinking: the ability to maintain consistency even in exceptional situations and during expansion
- Validation and research capability: the ability to distinguish judgments based on data and evidence from simple guesswork
3. Verify thinking, execution, and collaboration through three conversations
- In the first design-sense interview, break down a real backlog problem together for 45 minutes
- Observe the process of creating questions and structuring the problem without a take-home assignment
- In the second execution interview, dig deeply into one past project
- Verify the reasons for decisions, the points of compromise, and the methods tried through a sequence of questions
- In the third team interview, the product manager and engineer you will work with also participate
- Check how opposing opinions are handled and whether the actual collaboration system fits
4. The company should take responsibility for hiring validation
- Before the first interview, create an evaluation rubric and apply the same criteria to every candidate
- Prevent the interviewer’s preferences or the visual polish of the portfolio from determining the judgment
- Do not require unpaid assignments from candidates, and make a decision within one week after the three interviews
- Shift the preparation and burden needed for validation from the candidate’s homework to the hiring team’s responsibility
