The Design Interview

What to Expect

Design interviews differ from company to company, but most follow a similar pattern. For a junior or mid-level product designer role, expect something like:

1. Recruiter screen (20 to 30 minutes): background, motivation, salary expectations, availability
2. Hiring manager chat (30 to 45 minutes): your experience, how you work, why this company
3. Portfolio presentation (45 to 60 minutes): walk a panel through one or two case studies
4. Design challenge: a live whiteboard exercise (45 to 60 minutes) or a take-home task (a few days)
5. Cross-functional interviews: with a PM and an engineer, focused on collaboration
6. Culture or values interview

Nigerian startups often compress this into two or three rounds. Big global companies can have five or more. Ask the recruiter for the full process at the start. It is a normal question.

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The Portfolio Review

This is usually the most important round. You present, and interviewers ask questions.

How to prepare

• Pick one or two case studies relevant to the company. A fintech role? Lead with your payments work.
• Build a dedicated presentation (Figma slides or a deck), not just scrolling through your website.
• Structure each case study: context → problem → your role → process highlights → solution → impact → reflection.
• Aim for 15 to 20 minutes per case study, leaving time for questions.
• Rehearse out loud with a timer. Record yourself.

Questions you will hear

• "What was your specific role?"
• "Why did you choose this solution over the alternatives?"
• "What would you do differently?"
• "How did you handle disagreement with the PM or engineers?"
• "How did you measure success?"

Answer honestly. "We didn't measure it, but if I did it again I'd track deposit completion rate" is a good answer. Bluffing is not.

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The Design Challenge (Whiteboard)

You get a prompt such as "Design a way for students to split rent with flatmates" and 45 to 60 minutes to work through it, live, while thinking aloud. Interviewers care about how you think, not a polished result.

A reliable structure

1. Clarify (5 minutes): Who are the users? What is the goal? Any constraints (platform, market, timeline)? What does success look like?
2. Users and problems (5 to 10 minutes): Sketch a quick persona and the key pain points. State your assumptions out loud.
3. Prioritise (5 minutes): Pick one core problem or flow to focus on. Explain why.
4. Ideate (10 minutes): Several quick ideas. Choose one and justify it.
5. Sketch (10 to 15 minutes): Key screens of the main flow, including an error or edge case.
6. Wrap up (5 minutes): Summarise, name how you would test it, and what you would measure.

Tips

• Talk constantly. Silence makes interviewers guess.
• Ask questions, but do not stall. If they say "you decide", make a sensible assumption and state it.
• Consider context. Mentioning network reliability, USSD, low-end Android devices or accessibility shows real-world thinking.
• Manage time. Glance at the clock and move on when a stage runs over.

Take-home challenges

Clarify the expected time (a reasonable task takes 4 to 8 hours) and stick to it. Treat it like a mini case study: problem, assumptions, process, solution and next steps. It is fine to politely decline unpaid tasks that look like real client work.

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Behavioural Questions

Use the STAR method: Situation, Task, Action, Result.

"Tell me about a time you received harsh feedback."

Prepare four or five stories covering conflict, failure, influence without authority, tight deadlines and learning something new.

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Questions to Ask Them

• "How do designers work with PMs and engineers here?"
• "How many designers are on the team, and who would I learn from?"
• "How do you measure the success of design work?"
• "What would a great first 90 days look like?"

Good questions show you are evaluating them too.

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Try It in the Lab

The whiteboard challenge simulator gives you a random design prompt from Nigerian and global contexts, and runs a timer through each stage of the structure above. Each stage shows the questions an interviewer hopes you will ask. Use it with a notebook to practise under time pressure.