UX Design Interview Exercises

UX Design Interview Exercises is a hands-on guide to excelling in UX interviews, covering take-home assignments, whiteboard challenges, and app critiques. Packed with frameworks, tips, and real-life examples, it helps designers stand out by focusing on problem framing, storytelling, and smart use of AI tools.

Who it's for

This book is written for design pros and newcomers. If you’re new—don’t worry, the frameworks, examples and practice prompts will get you in good shape in no time. If you’re a seasoned design pro but haven’t interviewed in a while, a refresher never hurts, I’ve used my own book to remind myself how to properly do an app critique for an interview.

The design exercises

We'll break down the design exercises one by one:

1. App Critiques—frameworks, plus an in-depth walkthrough example.
2. Take home assignments—frameworks, approaches, plus a detailed solution walkthrough that led to a title bump.
3. Whiteboard challenges—frameworks, ways to stand out.

What's in the book?

As a Designer I've been at both sides of the table. I've interviewed 100s of candidates and have interviewed myself. Altogether this book brings 1000+ hours of interviewing experience and distills it to:

• Practical things you should know before going into a whiteboard challenge, app critique or a take home assignment
• Actionable frameworks. Pro designers don't wing it. Use a structured approach to break down the problem, explore solutions and...
• Ways to stand out. Subvert the problem. They ask for coffee you bring them a cup and some chocolate. Learn how to go above and beyond. I've also included examples from real interviews that led to higher closing offers and title bumps.
• Practice prompts to help you get better.
• Additional resources to get even more support and help.

My goal is to help you arm with the best tools and techniques. Use every advantage you have to put your best foot forward.

What's new in 2025

As AI is heating up, this booklet includes some quick tips you can use to apply to accelerate your take home assignment.

About author

Dan Shilov is a Silicon Valley-based staff product designer with over two decades of experience creating products for consumer and enterprise companies across web, mobile, and wearable platforms.

When he’s not hard at work pushing pixels, he mentors designers and speaks at local design organizations. Throughout his career he’s interviewed countless designers and design managers and seen them all struggle through various parts of the interview process.

As a result, he’s been sharing his insights and documenting interview best practices to help designers put their best foot forward to land their dream job. Dan holds a master’s degree in Human-Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon University.