April 29, 2018No Comments

UX Interview – ultimate list of questions

I had a chance to participate as well as run couple of interviews for multiple UX positions. I also managed to get some questions from my UX friends and eventually I came up with the list you may find below.

I genueinly believe this list will help candidates and recruiters. I am also open to any comments or more examples so I can update this article in the future. I’m also planning to come up with examples of good and bad answers for each of those questions so I am also open for your ideas in this subject 🙂

Basics / General

  1. Name someone you admire/follow in UX field?
  2. How do you stay up to date with current design trends and innovations?
  3. How did you get into UX Design?
  4. What is the definition of User Experience?
  5. What is the difference between UX and UI?
  6. Do you feel more like UX or UI Designer?
  7. What is more important UX or UI?
  8. What is User Centered Design?
  9. What is Design Thinking?
  10. How do you balance the goals of the end user with those of the business?
  11. What’s the difference between UX Designer and UX Researcher?
  12. What inspires you on daily basis?
  13. What is the project you are the most proud of. Why?
  14. What is the project you don’t want to show to anyone? Why?
  15. Tell me something you might have changed in one of your projects if you had a chance. Tell me why.
  16. Tell me about a time you have failed. What happened?
  17. What’s your dream project?

Design / Prototyping

  1. Which mobile do you consider as an example of great UX? Why?
  2. What design trend you can’t stand? Why?
  3. How would you design an ATM?
  4. How would you design an elevator buttons in 1000 floors building?
  5. How do you balance design aesthetic with revenue-generating activities on a website?
  6. How do you know you are on the right path?
  7. User needs or business goals — what is more important and why?
  8. How would you design Submit and cancel buttons. Tell me why.
  9. Show me a design example where you solved the problem.
  10. What design tools do you use?
  11. What are your favourite Sketch plugins? How do they help you in your design work?
  12. How do you use data (qualitative or quantitative) in your designs?
  13. What are the most common design patterns for mobile?
  14. Tell me about an assignment that was too difficult. How did you handle that?
  15. What’s the role of styleguide and what’s your opinion on that?
  16. Name one thing you would like to change to improve our product / website / service.
  17. Do you think pixel-perfect mockups are relevant? Why?
  18. What is your favourite font?
  19. Why do you think you can’t use certain fonts in mobile apps?
  20. Would you use custom or native (iOS/Android) UI controls for a mobile app? Tell me why.
  21. What do you think of hamburger menu? What’s the alternative?
  22. What’s the difference in designing for iOS and Android?
  23. What is the difference between designing a mobile and web app?
  24. How would you use VR/AR in your next big idea (app)?

Process / Collaboration / Poeple

  1. Have you worked in a Lean / Agile environment before?
  2. Can you explain iterative design approach?
  3. How do you know when your design is “done”?
  4. Walk me through your design process.
  5. If you design something and a developer told you “we can’t implement it” what would you do?
  6. You don’t have enough time to design everything on time. How do you handle it?
  7. How do you form positive relationships with teammates or stakeholders?
  8. Do you prefer working alone or with other designers? Why?
  9. Have you ever faced a situation in which your feedback/recommendation was not taken? How did you handle that?
  10. What did your previous team look like?
  11. You want to redesign some feature but the client says they don’t want to spend the time or money to make the changes. How would you approach that?
  12. What would be the most difficult type of client to work with?
  13. How would you decide which features to keep and which to cut?
  14. What’s your favorite workshop activity?
  15. How do you work with engineers/Product Managers/other designers?
  16. What is the difference between starting project from the scratch and taking over legacy project?
  17. When do you think UX phase starts and ends? Why?
  18. How do you handle situation when you have to find a sweet spot between a budget and requirements ?

Testing

  1. Have you created personas before? How did they help you?
  2. How do you think personas should reflect actual users?
  3. Can you describe a time when the requirements changed in the middle of a project. How did you handle that?
  4. How would you measure the success of a launched product?
  5. How do you test your solution in early stage?
  6. What kind of usability testing methods have you applied in your projects?
  7. How do you recruit user testing participants?
  8. What if you can’t access your actual users? (for the purpose of user testing)?
  9. How do you run remote user testing?
  10. What testing tool is your favourite? Why?
  11. How would you execute user testing in multiple countries around the world? What constraints come to your mind in this case?

Cliches / HR

  1. Why are you looking for a new position?
  2. What is about our product/service that excites you the most?
  3. Why do you want to leave your current job?
  4. What would your current colleagues tell if they had to describe your person?
  5. How did you find us?
  6. What is your salary requirements?
  7. What question do you wish I would ask?

Hopefully I helped you with hiring UX person or finding new UX position 😉

Clap here please : )

https://startupsventurecapital.com/ux-interview-ultimate-list-of-questions-d33e46b787aa

Cheers!

June 24, 20171 Comment

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Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start writing!

May 23, 2017No Comments

Home Office — 10 tips for survival

Dear reader,

This article doesn’t concern you if you work from home only occasionally (once or twice a month). This is for all freelancers and permanent home-workers. This if for people who want to improve their productivity between 8:00 am and 8:00 pm (yeah…).

1. Set up comfy working environment

  • professional desk,
  • comfortable chair,
  • good headphones,
  • solid Wi-Fi + alternative connection when something fails during this important call with stakeholder,
  • second screen (try it!),
  • whatever else makes you happy.

You are your own Office Manager right now. Don’t think of buying an expensive chair as a waste of money. Think of it as investment in yourself (and your back).

2. Dress up

I’m not saying you should be wearing a suit or the best shirt while sitting at home. It’s more about distinguishing your casual clothes from work clothes. The worst idea ever, although tempting, is working in your pyjamas / whatever you use for your bedtime. That sounds comfy, but at some point you won’t be able to tell, whether you are still in bed, or at work.

3. Housekeeping and cooking — just don’t…

It sounds like a great idea to use some time at home to clean up your bathroom or cook something for lunch. This is actually the biggest mistake everyone does. Cleaning and cooking will totally ruin your day, you will feel distracted and won’t accomplish your task for today.

Hint: Prepare your meals the day before, just like you used to when you worked 9–5 at the office.

4. Work from different places

Home office doesn’t mean you have to be working from home all the time. You can go to the following places and see how it boosts your productivity:

  • coffe house,
  • park,
  • open co-working place,
  • your friend’s house (if he also works from home),
  • and the best one — TRAVEL.
    If you have such possibility, go somewhere far away for couple of days and start working remotely from there. Nothing boosts your creativity better than new working environment.

Unsplash.com

5. Plan and execute your breaks

It might feel like you are on a break while working from home, but again — you are not. Switching from your tasks to Facebook or Medium article is not what i mean by break.

You should go for a quick walk to stretch your legs, visit the nearest park or local grocery shop. In general, it’s about leaving your working space for a while and contacting other human beings. Of course, it is also good for your eyes and spine, but that’s kind of obvious.

6. Keep your desk clean

Sketches, notes, 2 mobile phones, 5 pens, 2 mugs and 1 plate, SD cards, car keys, wallet. Sounds familiar? Messy desk is another productivity killer. Remember to keep your desk clean at all times.

Unsplash.com

7. Use your flexible working time wisely

Don’t be afraid of quiting earlier if you are done or want to go to the gym. Go swimming in the morning, because you don’t need to show up at the office at 9:00 sharp. In general —try to use your flexible working hours as an advantage. What is that you usually do after work? Just do it between the time you get up and start working. You will see how much additional time it gives.

8. Don’t let other people change your schedule and daily routine

People think that working from home is just sitting in front of your laptop and waiting for another Facebook message or Insta like, especially when they work from 9 to 5. Your job is to educate them, set your standards and don’t answer all the messages and phone calls. You have a lot of other distractors to deal with.

9. Schedule your tasks, set up the “finish time”…

…and stick to it.

I would also suggest creating some small deadlines or follow up calls with your colleagues during the day.

10. Hydrate

It is much easier to forget about drinking water when you work from home, because it feels like it’s just 3 steps away, right there in the kitchen. Personally, I would keep glass of water at all times at your desk.

It is also helpful when someone calls you on Skype suddenly, but you have really dry throat and no time to get H2O.


Do I follow those rules? Yes.
Should you? Yes.
Otherwise, you may end up like this:

Photographer:Xavier Sotomayor

April 27, 2017No Comments

UX <> Front-end | 1. When the shyness goes down and kills motivation

Dear reader,

Did you have a chance to cooperate with this type of front-end dev?

  • What’s my task?
  • Is it enough?
  • Sorry, it’s 5:02pm, I should be at home already.
  • Do we have to do that?
  • Can we take care of animations later on?

I bet you did. If not, you eventually will, no worries. Therefore, you should be prepared for taking care of different situations where dealing with such developer might be a big challange.

First of all, don’t blame Carl (let’s call him Carl) for anything. You have no idea about his background, situation at home, physical condition or just the way he rolls. Remember, it is not your job to “fix” that kind of person. He works and behaves the way he does and there is no point of forcing him to change. What you have to do is to develop some sort of social bond between you and him.

Make it personal

Create personal connection

It is highly possible that Carl has some weird hobby or interest. Whether this is playing chess, jazz concerts or planting trees, learn something about it.
I am not thinking of diving into some boring stuff you are not interested in. I’m thinking about learning some basic things about it so you can catch up with non-professional conversation with Carl. Try to be curious, asking questions and pretending you are really into sobject “x”.

Challenge him!

Carl is not really a big fan of cool and good looking animations or interactions, and that’s fine. Your job is to show him really great products or solutions and encourage him (UX evangelism!) to come up with something similar.

  • Do you think our app could behave like that?
  • I wonder if you could do something like this?
  • This seems to be really hard to be implemented (give him out of the box solution), but do you think you could manage to implement it in our app?
  • Is it hard to implement it? (of course it’s easy, but let him do his job).

Be accurate and organised

Color coding, dimensions and spacing

When you provide list of changes to Carl, don’t you ever say things like:

  • Let’s make this headline a bit brighter.
  • We need more spacing below this button.
  • We need bigger font on this button.

This will lead you only to one place, and place only — another iteration and dozen of new changes. What you have to do is provide Carl with straightforward, direct and simple list of changes, eg:

CTA Button: “Click here”, border 2px, font 16px, color #4990E2

Top Navigation: Background color: #ff0099, bottom border 1px, paddings 4px 4px

This type of comments will require getting some HTML / CSS knowledge and practical experience. Even if you are not into it at the moment, it will eventually pay off, trust me.

Provide him with out of the box solutions

From time to time, Carl may come up with some excuses like:

  • We have to do it the easy way.
  • This will be time consuming to implement that.
  • This is not possible, at least not right now.

Well, this is usually a bit frustraiting, but you have to remain calm. Google the solution, even if Carl could do that, send it to him and show him that it’s actually quite easy. You may also try forcing him to do research by himself, but in most cases you will end up in the same place where you were before.

Organise design space

Carl won’t manage to find desings in your emails from last month. He won’t spend time browsing any folders looking for “this design with small changes from last week”. If you want to smoothly cooperate with Carl, make sure to do the following:

  • keep all designs up to date, in one place (eg. InVision),
  • remember about naming (instead of HomePage22211a_changes.png, name it: HomePage_WithTopBanner_Final.png),
  • send list of changes comapring to previous version (Carl is not Design person, he won’t spot some minor changes),
  • add comments to specific elements using InVision review tool.

This is the first article about improving your cooperation with shy and not-motivated front-end developers. Stay tuned for some more and like it only when you enjoyed it.

Cheers.

April 7, 2017No Comments

8 areas of using Virtual Reality in current world

Some say, that time for Virtual Reality will come in about 3–5 years, and I couldn’t agree more. Although, there are already many different areas where VR comes in very handy and enhances User Experience.
Let me share some examples with you:

1. Military

VR simlation helps testing soldiers in many different stressful situation to check their reaction and performance without the risk of being hurt phisically or mentally. This is much cheaper than field training, and most importantly, much safer. It might be used for flight, vehicle and battlefield simulation, as well as virtual bootcamp.

Credit: United States Armed Forces

VR has been also proved as very successful method of helping war veterans suffering from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) getting back on feet. You can recreate traumatic situations in controlled environment and help people to confront difficult memories.

2. Real estate

Creating visuals for exterior and interior is a common thing and no one buys new apartment or house without seeing a project. Imagine if you could not only see the final effect, but actually have a chance to go around at your new place, even though nothing has been built yet. Pretty cool, isn’t it?

 You may not only discover every inch of your future apartment, but interact with objects such us lighting or oven, what enhances overall experience even more.

3. Automotive

There is already a lot of space for VR in automotive business. From customer’s perspective, you can go for a test ride with your dream car or configure your customized interior using VR headset.

REMEMBER TO WEAR VR HEADSET!

Volvo XC90 — VR Test ride

From manufacture’s perspective, it is possible to inspect exterior and interior of a new model, before actual prototype is manufactured. This saves a lot of money and time, giving the possibility to deliver better product in early stage of development.

4. Adult entertainment

The fact that porn industry is very early-adapter of new technologies shouldn’t be surprising. I’m not talking about some perversts sitting in their basement, using VR headsets and some additional toys for entertainment. I’m talking about long distance relationships, which are very common thing nowadays. Just imagine the possibilities…

5. Healthcare

One of the biggest advantages of using VR in healthcare is possibility to learn new or strengthen existing skills without any risk of hurting someone.

 

Source: http://res.cloudinary.com

It’s not only about training itself. VR might be also used for diagnostics which decreases level of destructive procedures and risky operations.

6. Gaming

VR can take gaming into whole new level. If you combine VR googgles with additional equipment ehnancing gamer’s experience, it will allow you to dive into completely new world.

 

Source: http://www.gamezilla.pl

7. Education and learning new skills

Were you always afraid of performing presentations in front of huge crowd? Not a problem any more! You can just practice your public speaking skills in front of fake audience, wearing VR googles.

Apart from that, VR market is vast opportunity for education system itself. Taking entire classroom for a field trip or exploring historical events in very entertaining way will help kids to easily remember all important information. Comparing to traditional classes, this may totally change approach to modern education.

8. Tourism

Have you ever dreamed about visiting Peru or Australia, but didn’t have money? Of course it’s not the same with VR googles, but it gives the possibility to experience at least some part of those beautiful places. Maybe it will help you to fall in love with one and then you will find the way to actually go there.

Marriot Hotels created customized VR booth, which allows to “teleport” people to nice places. It gives you the possibility to feel ocean breeze in your hair or sunlight on your skin.

Source: http://www.classicvenuesolutions.com

What’s next?

There is only one conclusion — VR world is going to emerge very quickly in the following years and replace traditional solutions in various industries, areas and businesses around the world. Good time to be alive, isn’t it?

December 22, 2016No Comments

10 quick tips for creating successful MVP (Minimum Viable Product)

It doesn’t matter if you work in a startup, digital agency or corporate environment. You can apply MVP approach on product or feature level and become much more effective. Please find some useful tips below:

1. MVP checklist

Before you start working on MVP, go through the following questions:

  • Who will use your product?
  • What value (time, money) offers your product?
  • What problem do you solve?
  • When and how much revenue it will bring?
  • What determinate success and failure
  • When can we deliver it?
  • What is the core functionality?

2. Define core functionality and stick to it

Before you start, think of the main functionality you want to deliver. It has to be really basic feature. Of course, later on you will be able to iterate, learn and create more (additional) features. Consider Uber as an example. Its core functionality is ordering cars and getting around different places with possibility to pay with your credit card. Everything else (rating, statistics, invoices, all the gamification) is the result of many iterations and testing.

You will face the urge of adding additional functionalities before launching your MVP. Please don’t. This will prevent you from getting early feedback and that’s what this is all about.


3. MVP is not minimum set of features.
 It’s something beyond.

Contrary to popular belief, MVP is not only the minimum set of features.
You should also remember about covering 3 other areas:

Reliability — no bugs, no crashes, no disappointment.

Usability — simple UI and legibility.

User Experience — what makes your app unique and lovable.

Idea: Aarron Walter

4. Minimum Viable Product is not a product. It’s a PROCESS.

Yes, exactly. Take a quick look at the diagram below, implement it in your workflow and repeat. Infinitely.

5. Don’t create, bootstrap!

Crafting custom design for your landing page, designing your own icons and trying to be too creative. But why? Instead of that, you can simply buy landing page template for 18$, download free set of icons (eg. Material Design), and use tested solutions instead of reinventing the wheel.

Here http://startupstash.com you may find tools, ideas, templates and basically 95% of things you need to create MVP.

6. Do you need actual product? NO.

Yeap, you don’t need to create an actual product. You can check your hypothesis in many different ways, and here are some good examples:

  • Dropbox came up with 4 minutes video explaining their idea and reached over 70 000 subscriptions for their unexisting product.
  • Buffer created landing page with pricing plans. This way, they not only knew if people are interested in their product, but they could literally determine how many customers are willing to pay for their service.
  • Oculus came up with preorder landing page. They managed to collect feedback about number of potential customers as well as raise real money for building real product.

7. Focus on small target group

Don’t reach out to millions if you can have much more valuable conversation with smaller group of people. It’s better to have 100 engaged users, rather than 10 000 only interested in your product.

It’s better to have 100 people love you than 1 000 000 people only like you
— Brian Chesky

8. Concierge MVP — be the software

Before you build any software, you can literally simulate entire customer experience manually. This way, you will be able to test if your idea is good, before even starting app development.

Example: You want to build an application that will match IT specialists profiles with the most suiting job offers. Yes, you can create a complicated algorithm for that, but before doing so, just start doing it manually. Not only you will get better matches for your candidates, but also you will have a chance to engage the market and test if your idea is worth a penny.

9. Wizard of OZ — fake it till you make it

Your product doesn’t need to be fully developed before you launch. If some parts of it don’t work, you may simulate it manually.

Let’s say you want to deliver some service in 4 different pricing plans. You would also like to provide online payment and automatic invoices, but… there is no time for that. What do you do?

  • Use manually generated links for online payments
  • Hire Finance / Accounting freshman who will take care of invoices

User will have a feeling that everything happens automatically. In the meantime, you can automate this process.

10. Don’t wait.

Don’t bother about missing animations, small UI imperfections or less relevant use cases. Think about valuable feedback you will get once your product is out there.

If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.”
— Reid Hoffman

and remember…

DONE IS BETTER THAN PERFECT.

July 8, 2016No Comments

I hate wasting my time — 6 tips for turning your corporate meetings into productive time

Hello! I hate wasting my time and I believe so do you. How many times were you frustrated during one of those useless, time-consuming and non-productive corporate meetings, which are obviously crucial for the project? Yes… I feel the same every god damn time.

I was trying to omit those meetings, but sometimes it is not possible. I discovered, there is nothing I can do about those meetings themselves, but I can do quite many things to spend this time more effectively. Of course, you cannot do everything. At some point, it has to be related to your casual work, so that other people couldn’t judge you, right? Here is what I suggest:

1. Answer your emails

Corporate meeting is a great time to catch up on your overdue emails. You finally have some time to actually focus on them and give meaningful response. No one should judge you, because you have to answer your emails anyway.

2. Set up your TODO list

Either this is your private, business or grocery list, just do it. That’s a perfect time to reorder your priorities and set up the most important goals for you. No one will judge you, because prioritizing your tasks will seem like a quite important task to be done, even during a meeting.

3. Clean up!

This might be code refactoring, designs clean up or just deleting old documents. You have to do that to improve your personal work space and efficiency. No one is judging you!

4. Catch up on blog posts

Corporate meetings give you a perfect opportunity to catch up on latest articles from blogs you like. Either it’s LinkedIn Pulse, Medium.com Smashing Magazine, or any other industry blog, it’s always good to stay updated on new trends, technology or just life hacks for improving everyday life. For the sake of coworkers, you are just doing a research for this new thing.

5. Learn new stuff

There are many applications (eg. https://www.codecademy.com/ or https://www.coursera.org/) allowing you to develop your skills in different areas. It might be new coding language, soft skill or new application you could use for your everyday work. Take your time, get better at stuff you already know or learn new things. Results will come up shortly!

6. Start sharing your thoughts

This is my first article on Medium.com. I always wanted to share my thoughts and experience this way, but I couldn’t manage to find time for it. Voilà! I finally succeed 😉

Adjust every minute of your life to complete your goals, because you are not getting back any second if it.

Thank you for your time!

…sending a high-five from another corporate meeting.

Follow me on:

LinkedIn  |  Medium