In this instructional video, the presenter emphasizes that a UX design interview is a two‑way conversation and that candidates often miss the opportunity to ask meaningful questions. He outlines seven specific questions candidates should ask interviewers, explaining why each reveals critical information about the team, role expectations, company culture, decision‑making, performance evaluation, and career growth. For each question, he provides examples of what to listen for, how to interpret answers, and red‑flag indicators (e.g., vague performance metrics or toxic work‑style expectations). He also stresses the importance of asking open‑ended questions, observing body language, and using the answers to assess alignment with personal values and career goals. The video concludes with a call to action to like, subscribe, and watch related videos on acing UX interviews and portfolio presentations.
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UX design interviews is a two-way street. The interviewers are asking you questions and they expect you to ask questions as well. Where most candidates fail is that they don't ask questions in interviews, and when they do ask questions, they don't ask the important questions. The truth is that asking questions in interviews increases your chances of landing a job. That is why in today's video, I'll be giving you 7 questions that you can ask in a UX design interview and why these questions are important. The first question you should ask is, what's What's the biggest challenge faced by the design team at the moment? This question helps you to understand how the design team is set up, what their priorities might be at the moment, and also the maturity of the project or product that they might be working on. In asking this question, you're going to understand what the design team is trying to focus on, and when you're able to identify the challenges, you can easily link them back to like your previous experience and see if those are challenges that you've already dealt with Or if those are challenges that you're looking forward to dealing with or challenges that you're looking forward to solving in your next role. Examples of challenges that a team might be facing might be building and maintaining a design system, improving design team culture, collaborating with external stakeholders, incorporating more user research and user testing into their design process. So you can begin to see how this helps you to identify the maturity of that team and the maturity of the products or projects that you might be working on. This is why this question is important. The next question you can ask is, what does success look like in the first 90 days for someone in this role? This question is also very important because it helps you to identify what the immediate goals might be for someone in that role. It is my favorite question because it quickly helps me to identify some of the quick wins that can help me to settle into that role. Rather than asking questions like, what will my day-to-day activities look like, which could have a more granular answer, this question is more open-ended because it is more result-focused. And it can also help you to understand what is expected of you in the first 90 days. Also, I want to add that it's important to ask open-ended questions rather than asking questions that have a yes or a no or one-word answer, so that you can ask questions that initiate conversations that can make your interview interesting. That is how to have a memorable interview with your interviewers. The 3rd question is, what are the traits of the designers that go on to be successful in in this role or in this organization? This is also a very, very interesting question because it helps you to understand or identify the values of designers that go on to be successful at that company. And you can immediately start to see how those values actually align with your own personal values as a designer. The thing is that what makes someone the best designer in a particular organization or what makes someone a successful designer in a particular organization might not be the best for you and might not be ideal. For example, if the answer to that question is that the most successful designers in this organization are people that do as they are told and people that work on weekends and work extra hours after work, you can already tell that this might be a toxic and unhealthy work environment, so you want to proceed with caution. But if the answer to that question is the people that go on to be successful as designers in this organization are people that ask a lot of questions that uncover user and business problems and people that collaborate well with external and internal stakeholders, then you know that this is somewhere that you can improve your problem-solving and collaboration skills and also leverage some of the design skills that you might have already. So you see why this is an important question. Quick one, if you've made it this far, support my channel by smashing the like button on this video and subscribing for more videos. The next question is, what do you enjoy the most about working in this organization? This question is a personal one, so it requires a personal response. The best thing to do for this question is to direct it to somebody in the interview panel. This helps you to learn from that person's personal experience. The thing is, most people like to talk about themselves, So when you single out somebody and you ask them this question, there's a high chance that they are going to be eager to answer the question and tell you about their personal experience. Now, in answering this question, what you are trying to find out from the person's point of view is the company culture, the values, how they've been able to progress within the company, and if they've been able to have any impact within the company. And also just to understand how they also interact with their colleagues, if there's mutual respect and all of these things that are important to have as a company. Also, when listening to the answer to this question, it's important to pay attention to the body language of the person that's answering the question because you want to be able to tell if they are being genuine or they're just bullshitting because they want to keep an appearance on behalf of the company so they can sort of attract you to join the company. So that's left for you to judge, but essentially it's important to ask this question because it helps you to understand about the company from one person's point of view, which I think it's really, really good. The next question is, how does this company decide on what gets built and what gets shipped. This helps you to have an understanding of how important decisions are being made within the company. You want to know if important decisions are just made by somebody waking up and feeling like this is the next direction without any particular design justification or business justification to be able to back that up, or if the work of your team, of the design team, or the work of the business team is actually being considered in decision-making. Essentially, what you want to understand is how much of the decision-making is influenced by design and if the opinions of designers is actually being valued, or designers are just tools that are used to move pixels around on the screen and just have like an output. So this helps you to understand if this is an environment that you actually do want to work in because the opinions of designers are valued. Next question is, how would the performance of someone in this role be evaluated? This question is also very, very important because it helps you to understand how your performance is going to be evaluated once you join the company. Do they use KPIs? Do they use OKRs? Do they use a combination of both? Are you going to have one-to-one sessions with your manager? Do you even have a manager? Who do you report to? All of these are important, and this is something that you get the answer to by asking this question. The thing is, if you don't have an idea of how your performance is going to be evaluated, then you're not even going to understand how to hit the ground running and the kind of things that you can do to optimize your output so that you can get a good performance evaluation. Also, one of the red flags to look out for is if the answers this question is unclear, it means that maybe the company or the interviewers don't understand how performance is being evaluated, and that might be a red flag that might mean that you should proceed with caution. The last question that you should ask is, what does the career path look like for someone in this role? Of course, the reason why you're joining this company or leaving your previous job is to be able to progress on your career ladder as a designer, and the reason why this question is also important is because you want to join a company that encourages that and also helps you with some stability. Asking this question helps you to understand what the career path looks like for designers in that organization. And it is very, very important because a lot of companies do not have solid career paths for designers, right? You need to be able to understand how you get to progress from one level to the other. Are you joining the team as a junior UX designer? How do you get to become a midweight UX designer? And how do you get to become a senior designer? What are the things that you need to be able to achieve to get there? What are the examples of people that have progressed in their career within the organization? And again, if the answer around how your career path is going to progress in the company is unclear, then that might be something to also look out for. Essentially, you should be able to understand how your performance is evaluated, and you should be able to understand what the career path looks like for designers in the organization. Hopefully, these questions come in handy in your next UX design interview, and you can make use of them in your own unique way. If you enjoyed watching this video, you can watch other videos I made on how to ace your next UX design interview and presenting your portfolio in a UX design interview. Don't forget to smash the like button and subscribe to my channel for more videos like this. I'll see you in the next one. Bye!
