Soleio's go-to design interview question

As the second designer at Facebook and Head of Design at Dropbox, Soleio has hired some of the most prolific designers in the world.

Here's how he would run a design interview today 👇

My Go-To Design Interview

If I am under the gun and have to interview a software designer on a dime, I often ask more senior candidates the following:

In advance of our conversation, select 2-3 apps or services that you absolutely love and use regularly, ideally ones that I am totally unfamiliar with. We go back and forth to identify one—let’s call this hypothetical app Zombo.

In our interview, I would ask the candidate to spend 5-10 minutes pitching me Zombo…

Tell me what’s fantastic about it, how you use use, what details are well made, all with the aim of convincing me to install and use it by the end of the interview. I ask questions about how they found Zombo, how they onboarded, how it falls short of their expectations, etc.

I then pivot to the following scenario👇

You are now head of design of Zombo for the next three months. What would you propose to the company that they work on next? Why?

What can reasonably get done and shipped to users in 3 months?

This line of discourse tells me a great deal about a candidate: What they value in products the love - How well they can build up context from scratch and explain an unfamiliar topic - How good they are at selling: both the ideas of others but also their own ideas - How strategic they are.

Do they propose a brand redesign? UI clean up? Or something more strategic, maybe even cunning?

How competent are they at forecasting: Do they actually know what can be realistically accomplished in 3 months time? Could they reliably drive that convo with their engineering counterparts and know what to ask and de-risk?

How resourceful they are: What design skills they lack that they might want to recruit for or staff externally? Can they name people who are perfect for this 3-month strategy?