UX designer interviews always include a portfolio review, and that's where most candidates struggle, not because their work isn't good, but because they describe what they designed instead of why they designed it and what happened as a result. The interviewer already sees the screens. They want to understand your thinking.
What UX interviews test
Interviewers are evaluating whether you have a structured design process, can back up your decisions with research and reasoning, and can work effectively with product managers, engineers, and stakeholders who will push back on your designs. Aesthetic sense matters, but it's table stakes. Process and collaboration separate candidates.
Portfolio and process questions
"Walk me through a project in your portfolio"
Structure your walkthrough: the problem you were solving and for whom, your role and constraints, the research you did, key design decisions and alternatives you rejected (and why), what you built, and the outcome or learning. Don't spend more than 30 seconds on visual details unless asked. Spend most time on your thinking.
"This project was a checkout redesign for an e-commerce client. The problem: cart abandonment was 72%, well above industry average. My role was to lead UX across three sprints. I started with session recordings and exit surveys. The data pointed to two things: users didn't understand the shipping cost until step three, and the form had 14 required fields. I ran three user tests on two redesigns: one that surfaced shipping cost upfront, one that reduced required fields to six. We ended up shipping a hybrid. Abandonment dropped to 58% in the first month. The main trade-off I navigated was with the business team, who wanted optional fields for marketing data. I showed them the test results and we agreed to make those fields post-purchase rather than in-flow."
"What's your design process?"
Describe a realistic process, not a textbook one. Something like: understand the problem and business context, research (users + data), define the problem clearly, explore a range of concepts, test and iterate, ship and measure. Stress that the process adapts to the project; a two-week sprint and a six-month redesign use the same steps at different speeds.
Research and methods questions
"When do you use qualitative vs. quantitative research?" Qualitative (user interviews, usability tests) tells you why something is happening. Quantitative (analytics, surveys) tells you how widespread it is. The best projects use both. Show that you use data to prioritise what to investigate and qualitative research to explain what the data shows.
- User interviews: exploratory, open-ended, finding unknown unknowns
- Usability testing: watching users complete tasks to find friction
- Card sorting: understanding user mental models for information architecture
- A/B testing: quantifying which design performs better at scale
- Diary studies: understanding behaviour over time, not just in a test
Collaboration and stakeholder questions
"How do you handle pushback from a product manager or engineer on your designs?" Show maturity: you don't dig in on every disagreement. Understand the concern, present your reasoning, and offer to test if there's genuine uncertainty. Know when to hold a position (when you have data) and when to let it go (when it's a preference).
"How do you work with engineers to make sure your design is implemented correctly?" Talk about design system use, developer handoff documentation, regular check-ins during build, and how you handle implementation gaps without being precious about pixel perfection.
Behavioral questions with sample answers
"Tell me about a design decision you made that you later changed based on user feedback"
S/T: "I designed an onboarding flow for a B2B SaaS tool that I thought was clean and minimal. We shipped it and completion rates were lower than expected."
A: "I ran three user sessions with new sign-ups. What I found was that my minimal design had removed too much context. Users weren't clear on what the product actually did by step two, so they dropped. I had prioritised aesthetics over clarity. I revised the flow to include one short value statement per step, which added length but removed ambiguity."
R: "Onboarding completion went from 41% to 67% in the following month. The lesson was that minimal doesn't always mean clear, and testing assumptions about simplicity is as important as testing complex flows."