Interviewing for a design role? You’ll likely encounter some common design interview questions that aim to understand your creative process and approach to projects. While interviews vary between companies, these 10 questions can help you think through your own experiences to craft solid answers.
1. “Where do you find inspiration?”
This open-ended question reveals how you find sources of inspiration to spark ideas Some good answers
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Browsing design blogs and sites like Dribbble, Behance, and Awwwards to see cutting-edge designs.
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Finding inspiration in everyday things, like interesting textures, patterns, or color palettes Paying closer attention to details can unveil creative insights.
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Looking at non-digital sources like nature scenes, architecture, artwork, or photography exhibits. Changing environments stimulates new neural connections.
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Reading broadly about art, culture, science and current events. Diverse information feeds a hungry mind.
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Following innovators in other fields like product design, fashion, and advertising. Creative people cross-pollinate ideas.
The key is demonstrating curiosity and an ability to gather many inputs then connect the dots in novel ways.
2. “How did you design your portfolio?”
This reveals your strategic thinking and ability to solve your own design challenges. To prep, ask yourself:
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What was the goal for your portfolio? Did you aim to showcase breadth or depth? Target specific roles or companies? Highlight technical skills?
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How did you select projects to include? Did you focus on recent work, passion projects, or your best executions? Variety or cohesiveness?
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What guided the layout and flow? Simplicity or complexity? Thematic structure? Priority on images or text? Mobile-first or desktop?
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What tools did you use to design and build the site? Figma, Adobe CC, Webflow? Did you code it from scratch?
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How does your portfolio reflect your style as a designer? Playful or serious? Maximalist or minimalist? Retro or futuristic? Monochrome or vibrant?
Showcase your thought process, not just the end product.
3. “Tell me about projects you’re most proud of and why.”
With this, interviewers want to understand:
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Your design values and what you consider marks of great work
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The type of challenges you find rewarding
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Your problem-solving approach
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How you measure success
Pick projects that made an impact or taught you something. Explain the problem you were tasked to solve, your process, biggest obstacles, and what you learned. Share any numbers that quantify the results, like conversion rates, engagement metrics, or ROI.
Resist the urge to walk through every detail. Focus on the insights that got you hired for more projects.
4. “What software do you use?”
This is a straightforward technical question to gauge your proficiency with design tools. Be prepared to list programs you’re highly skilled in, like:
- Photoshop
- Illustrator
- InDesign
- Figma
- Sketch
- InVision
Plus any you have working knowledge of. Don’t inflate your abilities, but do spotlight strengths that align with the role.
For example, if UX/UI is emphasized, highlight Figma and Sketch. For print, InDesign expertise. For icon and illustration work, your Adobe CC chops.
5. “How do you work cross-functionally with developers, copywriters, project managers, etc.?”
No designer is an island. Interviewers want to know you can collaborate smoothly across disciplines. Share examples of how you:
- Solicit input from stakeholders early and communicate regularly.
- Compromise when needed without compromising quality.
- Translate technical concepts between teams.
- Set realistic expectations on timelines or functionality.
- Resolve conflicts diplomatically.
- Are willing to iterate and take feedback during the design process.
Emphasize team player skills like emotional intelligence, communication clarity, accountability, and flexibility.
6. “How do you approach projects?”
This reveals your overall workflow. Explain key steps like:
- Clarifying objectives and constraints upfront.
- Researching the target users, market, and existing products.
- Creating a mood board to hone a visual direction.
- Sketching quick concept ideas before jumping into digital.
- Seeking early feedback from stakeholders.
- Defining MVP features vs nice-to-haves.
- Building wireframes, prototypes, and mockups.
- Presenting options and iterations.
- Refining and testing with users.
Share your philosophy—like mobile-first or design thinking—and tools used in each stage.
7. “What would you improve about our product or website?”
Come prepared with some ideas so you can answer thoughtfully. But avoid sounding arrogant by bashing their design.
First, pay the interviewer a compliment about aspects you do enjoy. Then diplomatically recommend improvements, saying things like:
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“One thing I would love to explore is…”
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“I think there may be an opportunity to try…”
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“A small enhancement could be to…”
If possible, speak to pain points you’ve personally experienced as a user. Focus on solutions for customers, not just aesthetics. Back suggestions with research, data, or examples of patterns that work well on competitors’ sites.
8. “Tell me about a time you failed and how you learned from it.”
Everyone messes up occasionally. How you recover matters most. Pick a real failure caused by some mistake like:
- Not managing time or budget properly.
- Gaps in communication with team members or stakeholders.
- Scope creep making a project go off the rails.
- Presenting work that missed the mark.
Explain what went wrong briefly without getting defensive. Focus most on the lessons you took away that improved your future work. Perhaps you adopted tools to get better organized or changed processes to manage communications and feedback better.
Demonstrating self-awareness and continuous improvement can make failures your greatest teachers.
9. “How do you stay updated on design trends?”
Recruiters look for designers who are continual learners. Share resources you rely on to stay aware of emerging styles, techniques, and tools, like:
- Design publications (print and digital)
- Blogs, podcasts, YouTube channels by industry leaders
- Social media platforms like Instagram and Pinterest
- Online design communities
- Newsletters and email digests like HTML Email and UX Design Weekly
- Conferences, Meetups, and events like Adobe MAX
- Online tutorials and skill development courses
Discuss how you put new ideas into practice as well, like experimenting with animation in UX or trying 3D rendering. Lifelong learning is key.
10. “What distinguishes you from other candidates we’re interviewing?”
This final question gives you a chance to wrap up the interview strong by highlighting your unique strengths. What makes you stand out? Share 2-3 things like:
- A portfolio with cutting-edge, visually impressive designs.
- Domain expertise in their specific industry.
- Uncommon combinations of skills (like UX research and 3D).
- A holistic design background spanning web, app, print, branding, packaging, etc.
- Hands-on experience collaborating closely with clients.
- Awards recognitions.
- Senior-level expertise but with a junior designer’s growth mindset.
You don’t need to downplay other candidates, but do feel confident articulating your value clearly. That confidence can be the deciding factor that makes you their top choice.
Preparing responses to questions like these will help you shine in design interviews. Tailor answers to each company’s needs using the job description for clues. With a little practice, you can master the art of creative interviews.
1 What are some of the design issues in distributed systems?
Following are some of the issues found in distributed systems:
- It is possible for applications to run on a wide range of computers and networks through the Internet. There would be different kinds of networks, but they wouldn’t be able to tell them apart because they would use standard Internet protocols to talk to each other. This becomes an issue while designing distributed applications.
- Openness: How easily a system can be changed and added to in new ways is measured by its openness. It tells distributed systems how easily new sharing services can be added and made available for clients to use.
- Security: Users value the information kept safe in distributed systems, so it needs to be kept safe. This can be hard to do sometimes because the privacy, availability, and integrity of the distributed systems need to be kept up.
- Scalability: A system is scalable if it can still work when the number of requests and resources needed go up a lot. When you design a distributed system, you have to think ahead of time about how well it can be made to handle changing user loads.
- Dealing with Failures: In a distributed environment, failures are partial, which means that even if some parts stop working, others will still be able to. Dealing with these failures is hard because you have to find the exact parts where the failures happen.
Design Facebook’s newsfeed system.
Facebook’s newsfeed allows users to see what is happening in their friends circle, liked pages and groups followed.
- What features are needed? Make a newsfeed with posts from other system entities that the user follows. Posts in the newsfeed can be text, audio, or video files. Nearly real-time add new posts to the user’s newsfeed
- What are some of the most common problems? What happens if it takes a long time for the new post to appear in the news feed? Can the algorithm handle a sudden increase in users? Which posts should be shown first in the news feed?
- Some things to think about are: look at how fanout works for sending posts to followers; look at how sharding can be used effectively to handle a lot of users; A user’s feed data shouldn’t be spread out among several servers. Instead, sharding can be done on user ids.
How to Answer System Design Interview Questions (Complete Guide)
FAQ
What is asked in a design interview?
How do you answer a design interview question?
Be sure to ask the interviewer about the company’s business goals in relation to branding and frame your answer accordingly. Tip: Use the STAR method —Situation, Task, Action, Result—to formulate answers to behavioral and situational interview questions. 2. What is your experience with the design programs you’d be using in this position?
How do I prepare for a system design interview?
If you are preparing for a system design interview, you might get ready by practicing your answers to some common interview questions as well as some in-depth system design questions.
What questions should an interviewer ask a graphic designer?
The following list of interview questions will include questions an interviewer could ask related to your professional and educational background: When was the first time you first realized you wanted to work in graphic design? Where did you attend college? What did you major in, and which courses did you enjoy the most?
How do you ask a system design interviewer?
Ask your interviewer to clarify: Most system design questions are purposefully vague. Ask clarifying questions to show the interviewer how you’re viewing the question and your knowledge of the system’s needs. Discuss emerging technologies: Conclude each question with an overview of how and where the system could benefit from machine learning.
