Design Interviews – Whiteboard Challenge
What is a Whiteboard Challenge?
A whiteboard challenge is a common exercise used during design interviews, especially for interface, product, and strategy-related positions. Its purpose is to assess a candidate’s problem-solving and design-thinking abilities in real-time. The general process of this challenge involves:
- Interviewer presents a specific design problem
- Interviewee understands context of problem and asks clarifying questions
- Interviewee brainstorms, sketches, and prototypes a solution approach
- Interviewee summarizes and presents their final solution
Basic Framework
- Understand and restate the design problem/goal
- Who are the stakeholders and what are their pain points
- Narrow down aspects of problem statement you will focus on; what are your design objectives
- What solution directions are available? Choose a few to briefly explore
- Summarize solution exploration and narrow down to final solution (include personal anecdotes to justify design decisions)
- How specific features of your solution addresses certain pain points
- Identify expected outputs/outcomes of your product and how success would be measured
- Create a persona and walk through solution with user scenario (can take into consideration of edge cases/unusual scenarios and how the user may troubleshoot)
- Identify potential personal, social, and business impacts of your solution
Questions to ask
User-centric: who are the users/stakeholders and what are their needs/wants?
- Is it correct for me to assume that the primary users are [xxx]?
- Are there specific goals that the company wants to prioritize?
- Will [xxx] be affected by my design choices?
- Confirm stakeholder skill level requirements
Problem Scope and Context
- What is the company/client’s definition of success?
- Are there preferences in the form of the solution? (digital, physical product, etc.)
- How long is the company planning to have this product on the market?
- Were there any previous design iterations that I should keep in mind? Is the company looking for a modification to an existing product or the development of a new product?
Restrictions:
- Are there any budgets to keep in mind?
- Are there deadlines/schedules to keep in mind?
- Are there restrictions on the amount of land or space used?
- Are there limitations in tools and technologies available?
How to Master the Whiteboard Challenge
- Take a public speaking/presentation-based course: learn to speak in terminology
- Increase knowledge and awareness of recent technologies, different industry trends, and
- general knowledge on US demographics (extend to International if you have the time)
- PRACTICE
- Find a whiteboard challenge buddy: switch roles, solve problems together
- Speed run prompts for 15min
Tips & Advice
Do’s
- Ask clarifying questions and challenge existing assumptions
- Vocalize your thought process
- Sketch
- Put stakeholders in priority
Don’ts
- Spend more than half of the time asking questions
- Jump straight into the solution
- Ignore interviewer feedback
- Don’t design against user needs or try to change their needs
- Don’t work against the business
Remember…
- You are being evaluated on your design thinking and problem solving so talk out loud
- Journey to end results matter more than the final product
- Be creative: the design prompts are unpredictable and can be on topics you aren’t familiar with; ask enough questions and be innovative in your design solution; try to highlight your strong suites and vocalize logical assumptions/estimations to show your thinking
Additional Resources
Guides:
- Coursera Preparing for the Whiteboard Design Challenge article
- YouTube video: How to Ace Your First Whiteboard Challenge For Product Design
- 5 Steps to Master Whiteboard Challenge article
Practice: