Design & User Experience Topics
User experience design, frontend architecture, and design systems. Includes UX principles, accessibility, and design documentation.
Research Mindset and Curiosity
Discussing any evidence of research mindset, curiosity about user behavior, collaboration experience, and ability to work with ambiguity. Even if formal research experience is limited, demonstrate problem-solving approach and interest in learning.
Pragmatism & Shipping Quality Solutions Within Constraints
Understanding real-world constraints (time, resources, technical limitations, budget, team capacity) and prioritizing effectively. Shipping good-enough solutions on time and in scope rather than endlessly iterating toward perfection. Balancing design quality and user experience with business needs and timelines.
Findings Presentation and Impact
Ability to clearly present research findings, articulate key insights, and discuss how findings influenced product decisions. Understanding of how to communicate research results to different audiences. Demonstrated ability to translate findings into actionable recommendations.
End To End Research Problem Solving
Demonstrate ability to work through complete research projects from problem definition to actionable recommendations. Walk through how you would scope a research question, select appropriate methodologies, plan execution, analyze findings, and communicate recommendations. Show how research activities connect to each other and build toward insights. Discuss how you determine what research is needed and what is out of scope.
Research Hypothesis Development and Testing
Learn to develop clear research hypotheses and design studies to test them. Practice distinguishing between open-ended exploratory research and hypothesis-driven research. Discuss how you develop hypotheses from prior knowledge, design documentation, or preliminary research. Explain how you structure research to test hypotheses rigorously.
Rapid Ideation and Iteration
Skills and practices for quickly generating, testing, and refining ideas and prototypes. Topics include divergent ideation, sketching multiple approaches, prioritizing experiments, building minimum viable prototypes, time boxed design sprints, gathering rapid feedback from stakeholders or users, and using feedback to iterate without over attachment to initial solutions. Discuss experiment design, success criteria, lightweight validation techniques, and decision frameworks for pivoting or scaling ideas. Emphasize comfort with ambiguity, trade offs between speed and fidelity, collaboration across disciplines, and the cultural and process supports that enable continuous fast iteration.