Physical Product Designer Interview Preparation Guide

This should help you to determine the person's attitude toward coming up with ideas, how he fights the tendency to procrastinate, and the out-of-the-box technique he uses to bring fresh concepts to his work. It should also show how self-aware he is about what he personally needs to do his best work in stressful environments.

Oftentimes, an agency will take on a last-minute project for a client, or a project you thought was completed will need additional adjustments. When these projects are thrown at someone who already has a full plate, it can be frustrating and stressful. The candidate's answer should show that he can ask the right questions of his manager to determine what he should focus on.

When thinking about this question, consider your audience and have a range of apps/websites that can demonstrate a diversity of aspects you find important to design. When I was interviewing, I chose SquareCash, Lyft, and Meetup — all experiences I loved for different reasons.
SquareCash represented simplicity in design. It made money transactions painless and solved a problem I didn’t realize I had. Lyft represented a peer-to-peer service that was trust-worthy and delightful and leveraged local communities to foster sharing in my hometown (San Francisco) and beyond. Meetup represented a platform for community at scale and had provided a tribe for me no matter where I was in the world.

Having self-awareness of how you work and demonstrating flexibility is key. Consider the company you’re interviewing with — the size, what you know about the culture, and how you might fit into work dynamics. Also be true to yourself. The interviewer will be looking for how you play with others and determine if you’re a good culture fit.
When thinking about this question, I sometimes draw a graph mapping out my energy levels throughout the day. I’ve discovered I like ‘heads-down’ time in the morning, collaborative time after lunch, (snacks throughout the day) and time to consume content and find inspiration in the late afternoons. I try to balance my own patterns while being aware of others and the dynamics around me.

Rather oddly, polymers are both solid and liquid at the same time. They behave unlike any other material. The career of a designer lasts hardly long enough to gain thorough understanding of the polymer nature, but in order to avoid the most obvious pit falls of plastic design it useful to have knowledge of the reasons and mechanisms behind them. Mechanical loads, environmental conditions and time - especially in combination - challenge every plastic product. If they have not been properly considered in design, the product is unlikely to last to the end of its expected lifetime .

I always had an interest in web design, but it’s hard to have all the skills of both a developer and designer. I think knowing HTML and CSS can help a designer bridge the gap to communicate better with developers, especially on the front-end. Learning HTML and CSS is relatively easy, but it’s a bit like learning a language; you have to practice and keep up with it. I love that I get to touch the code. It’s important that a designer follows up on his or her vision (or the mockups).

There are so many areas within design it’s almost impossible to be a master of all. You can probably become proficient in certain areas in as fast as a year. If you want to be really proficient, focus on specific areas you prefer, like web design, then you’ll naturally become a specialist.

This is a really hard question to answer because it is very dependent on context. If the question is asked in context of building a new piece of software, you can talk about how an MVP (minimum viable product) could be developed.

If the question is asked in context of an existing product, you should focus on the fundamentals of product strategy. Before drilling down on specific features, you will need to develop a clear picture of the business goals and user needs. You should be ready to answer the following questions:
☛ Who is the user?
☛ What are the user’s goals?
☛ Why should the user care about a feature? What problems does it solve?

You want to get a better idea of how this person thinks about the creative process: Does he rely on inspiration? Data? Just plain hard work? The answer to this question will also provide you with more information about what the designer thinks are the most important steps in the process -- such as research, interviews, the critique process, etc.

This should reveal how the designer thinks about designing for clients, what's important to brands, and what information he thinks is essential to creating results-driven design work.