#118 Mastering Whiteboarding and Take-Home Assignments in UX Design
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With your how-to challenge, typically you would have five people probably taking the same challenge. And you want to be somebody people remember, somebody people realize, oh, she has something to offer, something new, interesting angle, right? You have to embrace your strong sides. You have to understand what you can offer that nobody else can offer and try to go all in into it. But also add a little bit of a critical thinking to this, because if you know what type of company you're applying to, you might understand the sorts of their challenges they're experiencing. Very often, if you talk about the rule of a thumb,

Startups typically lean more towards like very proactive doers, hands-on people, whereas the bigger companies, more enterprise-based companies, they would look for people with a strong storytelling skills, strategy skills, design thinking skills. So it really depends, but always try to use your critical thinking, plus understand the context of the business. ♪

Hello, designers, and welcome to a new episode of Honest UX Talks. As always, I'm joined by Anfisa, and today we will be discussing a very controversial topic. I mean, half of it is controversial, half of it is not controversial. Whiteboarding exercises are one part, not controversial, very good. But take-home assignments tend to stir some very fiery conversations in the industry, and we will go into those as well. So we will be talking about the recruitment process,

process for designers and these two parts, which are, let's say, the exercises that we typically get when we're trying to land a new job.

So it's a topic that concerns us all. Before I ask Anfisa how her past week was, because I missed our conversations and I'm looking forward to learn, I just want to thank our sponsor, Wix Studio. I'm exploring it heavily because I'm moving my portfolio in Wix Studio. And so I realized that one of the things that recently felt like a lifesaver is templates. You would think that templates are like this standard part of a product, but the

quality of them is essentially what makes the difference between a useful template so something that you don't really need to edit to the point that it would have made more sense to just start from scratch if they're crafty and quality and I think they have that because they're community based so you can see

sell templates as a creator on Wix Studio. You can grow your income and showcase your talent. I don't know, maybe get more projects and jobs. I think that this is an incredible two-win situation, right? So you can sell templates as a creator, but also it was very useful for me to go around the templates, find something that I could kind of tweak and inform. And they're also a source of inspiration, right? It's just like looking at UI inspiration. I always feel that they're a very neat piece of design. Plus,

If you go into it, so if you start selling templates and creating them, it's a very nice path to networking and expanding your network. So this is what I've been up to with this very nice product. And now let's jump into what you have been up to in the last couple of weeks, my dear friend.

Yay! Welcome back, I guess, because we haven't talked for a little while, because we have guests. But I'm really happy to catch up with you. I'm doing pretty well. Last time we talked, I was kind of very sick, very tired, dragging myself through the days, but now I'm much better. I'm more in the creative side of things. I have energy to create, and that's exciting.

Literally this whole weekend I've been spending on working on the redesigning my online courses website because it's been very long due. I actually originally designed the website for my courses in 2018 or beginning of 2019. And that's been like five years ago. And I'm so unhappy with it. I literally always cringe as soon as I see my website, but it's just never been a priority for me.

And recently, as I built a website for the community, I decided to sort of follow the same template, follow the same visual brand guideline, and also redesign my online courses website. So that's very exciting. I also have a community member who's helping me out in this project.

And we get a really cool thing going on. I feel like it's really creative and I'm exploring a lot of effects and it's just like, you know, a lot of small things that I'm playing with. So I didn't even notice how the whole weekend passed and we literally built a website in a weekend. So yeah, I'm looking forward to launching it. I'm hoping to get it out there in a week. So probably meet maybe like 20th of November. Finally, well-deserved update for the website. And

And also with the community, we're doing fine. The community is somehow starting to grow. I have no idea why. Maybe it's all those conversations we're having. Maybe people are realizing that by the end of the year, it's a good moment to actually start looking for a job. But yeah, community is really growing and I'm excited to meet new people, hearing the stories, getting more energy, going into the design critiques we're having, our whiteboarding challenges, speaking of, it's really cool what's going on there. I'm in a good spot. And how about you, Ioana? I'm very happy to hear that.

I'm doing very well as well. I'm in this, I would say it's a very self-reflective stage of my life. But now I realize I am always self-reflective state. That is my life, self-reflecting. So it doesn't sound like it's something very special. As the end of year approaches, it's just like this kind of pattern. It's very...

So every year, starting November, I'm becoming, I don't know, deeper, I think, more philosophical, sometimes more emotional. It's just like this introspection exercise is deepening and it's more intense. So this is what's happening. The end of the year is coming soon. And now I'm asking all the questions. Am I happy in my job, in my life, in whatever it is?

that I'm doing? What do I want to do next? What would make me happier? Can I maximize my satisfaction? Am I in the right places in all of the aspects of my life? So all these kinds of just self questioning and then trying to dig for the answers. You know that I've been talking for a

long time about needing to move closer to art. And I feel like this is something that is becoming increasingly unignorable in my interior life. I feel like I have to say some things. I don't have a lot of artistic ideas. I don't have a lot of artistic instruments for self-expression, but I feel like I have to go on this path as well. It's like an urge. It's like a sense of urgency and something that I just have to do. So I'm just

building the courage to like today I went in this museum of recent art in Bucharest. I was with my daughter. She was in this kind of very nice workshop with kids where they were kind of drawing fairy tales and trying to reflect those in images. And it was really interesting. I wasn't part of the workshop, but I was talking with this artist that was showcasing in the museum of recent art. And she told me something along the lines, I'm obviously always followed by my imposter syndrome wherever I go. And I'm like, I can't do art because I don't have studies. I'm not

legitimate I'm an imposter I don't know techniques I don't know the mechanics behind art right and she was like wait wait wait we are actually very jealous of the artists that don't have studies because they don't have to spend so much time getting rid of the dogma right they're just more creative

more honest, their self-expression is not modified by so much knowledge and the tried and tested techniques and so on. And they spend many years trying to get rid of everything they've learned. So that was a very interesting angle. So who knows, maybe next year you'll see me move into art. I don't know. So everyone stay tuned. It's going to be an interesting transition, probably my most interesting transition so far. Honest art talks, I get it. Yeah.

prepare for a change of title as well. But yeah, apart from that, I'm also thinking about do I want to spend more time giving back to the community? What would make me happier? Is it time for me to actually start working on my own product, which is something I was kind of doing. But now do I want to fuel more of that

path also as a means for self-expression and finding something that's as meaningful as possible. With everything I've learned about AI, do I want to start doing maybe some consulting work by launching my own small AI design studio? So I have a lot of questions. I'm lucky enough to have a lot of possibilities.

to explore. But now, yeah, I think what's next for me is just a lot of self-reflection and a lot of just going in my cave and trying to see what is it that I'm feeling? Where is it that I'm going? What will come in my life next? Where can I make the most impact and be the happiest, right? So and I mean, happy can sound silly. We shouldn't necessarily maximize happiness. But I think maybe meaning like where would I feel I'm more meaningful or more

authentic or more aligned with who I am and what I want to become next. Right? So stay tuned for more of that.

Let's jump into our topic for today. In the meantime, so we are discussing whiteboarding exercises first and take-home assignments as part of the recruitment process. As always, I think we can start from our own experiences. What was the process and what was your experience with whiteboarding and take-home assignments in your, let's say, previous current job and the previous job? And kind of, I'm also going to talk about getting hired at Miro and then getting hired at UiPath, like the most, let's say, recent job.

I've had is like the last six years, but whatever. It's

Share a bit about your experience and then I'm going to share mine and then we can dive deeper into is it ethical to give take-home assignments? Should they be paid? And all that kind of questions. Maybe we can also go into a few tips with whiteboarding. I feel like that's something that many people might be experiencing today, especially if you're looking for a job. So maybe we can also discuss best way to do this. My experience, I've been looking for a job twice in my life. Before that, it was much easier because it was before COVID. And so a lot of the things were before just like based on the network or

recommendation, quick interview, and that's all. But after the COVID started, and then in the last three years, I was looking for a job twice. And I went through a couple of whiteboarding challenges. I remember three. They were different. One of them was kind of interesting. Well, typically, we think that whiteboarding challenge is this like offline or in real world, on-site type of setup environment, when you have a proper physical whiteboard,

where you can use some sort of crayon and start designing, I don't know, thinking out loud as you stay there. And this process is so much more engaging, right? And actually, I was doing a lot of whiteboarding challenges before as I was doing my startups. It's my team sitting in the same small co-working space room where we used a lot of like those brainstorming sessions with whiteboards.

So I loved whiteboarding. It was always a part of the process. If I think about why I joined the actual design industry, it was because I was in a hackathon. And in the hackathon, we sit in a little room where we sleep. We're almost in a sleep. Where we ate, where we discussed everything, we were fighting. It was all in front of the whiteboard. I was just in love with this collaborational spirit of literally whiteboarding together. And it was always a part of the

process and I realized that whiteboarding challenge could become a challenge that you usually go through in the job hunting process. When I framed it as a whiteboarding challenge, where people are challenging you when you are supposed to be like defending yourself or something, that just changed the perspective.

and somehow I didn't associate whiteboarding with actual whiteboarding. So when I first joined the whiteboard challenge in 2020, it was an interesting one because, hey, we did it online and it was some sort of hybrid version of the whiteboard because it was not right on, like, let's sit together in some sort of mirror or whiteboard or a fig jam. Back then there was no fig jam, but

It was not something that let's open a whiteboard tool and sit on this together while you're asking us questions. It was more of a, here is a prompt. They send me a document. And then during the five minutes, I had to read the document, ask some questions if I had any. And then they give me 60 minutes away to go and do my thing and then go back and present it. So it was some sort of online-offline setup where I was kind of in some touch points sitting with the team, but in some touch points wasn't.

I was really stressed first time. I remember myself rumbling. I remember myself thinking I have to show my process. And it was still the stage where we as design industry were so focused on design process. Even before jumping into that whiteboard challenge, I was like rehearsing, rethinking, remembering all the steps I have to follow in design thinking process. So I was so focused on the tools I have

to be using, like, should I use personas? Should I use jobs to be done? Which tools I will use for prioritization? All this type of things, right? And then when I jump into that whiteboard and challenge, I realized that I was so obsessed with the process. I prepared myself a bunch of tools. I actually printed out some templates for persona user journey mapping. And I was just like overly focused on ticking the boxes to make sure I show that I know the process. Okay, so I went through that following the process type of template.

And I then presented my design after one hour and I wasn't happy with myself. I felt like I rumbled through that exercise. I was focusing too much on making sure I have beautiful persona or something. And maybe I did have some interesting insights because at the end of the day, I was offered the job and I actually started working in the company where I interviewed. But back then, I just remember myself being so unhappy with the results. I literally spent three minutes designing the actual sort of concept.

that I thought I will lead with, I spend much more time just focusing on the process. That was the first time I realized I have to do something different. And then the second or third time, it was whiteboard already. So I think we already used FigJam. So it was end of 2021. There, it was literally just a FigJam with the two stakeholders or one stakeholder in a different challenge. And they were pretending to be like fake PMs. And I would ask them questions. And all together, we would sit and just kind of like organize sticky notes,

It was a bit more similar to a classic whiteboard, but because it was under the frame of being on the, you know, hiring process, they're still like evaluating my skills. It was much more stressful. And now as I'm talking about this, right, obviously I went through all those challenges firsthand.

this hybrid model the second time or third time. It was FigJam sort of session in one hour. I was able to sort of structure my knowledge, organize my thoughts, a little bit even draw next time. So the second time I joined this whiteboard challenge, I actually was able to arrive to some sketches, which was very ugly because it was actually during early stages of FigJam. FigJam just joined and you had this pen tool there. And as you draw there, I just felt super clumsy using it.

So I think that, you know, pen and paper is still my jam. But during the second time, I did it much better. And then I started realizing there are so many other ways to solve the problem in a very time-restricted timeline, right? And there are so many different angles you can take, like, should you focus more on design thinking than solving the user problem? Or should you focus more on business problem solving? All those different sort of

framings you could take. But now it's a different story because now I'm also doing a lot of whiteboard challenges with the community. We have it every month together. And I see so many different ways how people think and how you can present your thoughts. It's become a fun exercise on my experience. Plus, like I said already in the beginning, I realized that whiteboard challenge is supposed to be fun and collaborative and not just like a challenge where you have to present nonstop and everybody's listening to you. It's a different setup. You have to just take it

as a fun exercise, jamming together, having fun together, maybe sometimes arguing or debating together. But at the end of the day, you have this, it's almost like a story. You have this like problem, you're going through the mess and then there's a revelation and some sort of happy ending with some sort of result and you feel accomplished by the end of one hour. That's the feeling I think we should be all striving for if we're going through the whiteboard challenge today. That's about my experience. How about you, Ioana? Ioana.

I think you spoke to many of the things that we generally as designers and myself included have gone through, right? Thinking about whiteboarding exercises, checklist of things that we need to go through. And then what's next? What's the next thing I need to do here? And so just want to make a quick mention, I also had in person whiteboard challenges earlier in my career before COVID to your point. And I think those are much more interesting in a way, right? So I remember a

I had two whiteboarding. I think one of them was for my role in ING when I switched from doing content, whatever I was doing, to being a UX designer. And then I had another one to a role that ended up being dissolved before I could get it. So it was, I think it's for Adobe and they just canceled the open position and it was heartbreaking. And then...

And I had the first online whiteboarding exercise for EA Sports. And I got an offer to join FIFA. But then I was at the same time I learned I was pregnant. And so I told them, look, I can't join. It would have been amazing, right? To design for a game. And I was very excited. Anyhow, not the topic. But my first online whiteboarding exercise was with EA Sports. And they had a very nice exercise. And it was just like we were all in Miro. And it was very collaborative. And it was really just amazing.

Interesting, right? So I think the magic with doing whiteboarding exercises in a digital whiteboard is that you have many instruments you can play around with, right? So the physical whiteboard is drawing, sketching. And that's also, I think, the constraint kind of is more interesting. And I remember when we were doing whiteboarding exercises at ING trying to hire designers.

We were a bit abusive. I think those lasted like two hours, sometimes even three hours. But it was really interesting to see what people would jump to. Right. So visual designers would start sketching wireframes, more strategic people who are more leaning into research and the first parts of the design process. They were asking a lot of questions and taking notes and unpacking the problem space so you could see where everyone is going. And you knew that that's kind of their strong point. Right.

Whiteboarding exercises show you where someone is most comfortable. And that's an important thing to know when you're hiring someone. And also when you are looking to get hired is the place where you're going to in your whiteboard exercise, the place that is relevant for that role, right? So if you're

applying for a UI design role. And in the whiteboarding exercise, you're all about the research. I mean, it's not wrong. You can go through all the things, but people are probably probing for some kind of specific ways of thinking about problems, right? And you maybe want to be aligned with that.

My experience has been really interesting. I tend to be very generalistic in my whiteboarding exercises. Like I try to go through some of like bigger picture, not checklist, checklist. Like now I'm doing the interview. Now this is the persona. Now I avoid that by all means, but I'm really playing around with the

problem, right? So what do we know about this problem? Where did we learn about it? Okay, good, interesting. What else can we discover? Is there any other experiment worth running? And so we have these kind of hard hypothetical part, right? And so it's interesting that in whiteboarding exercise, the team that's interviewing you is also taking roles. So you can ask a lot of questions like, do we have any prior research? And then they make things up. And so it's a continuously dynamic and it should be, it should be a conversation.

it's not a one-man show. It's like, look, what if here I go on this path? What do you say about that? And sometimes they might say, we don't want to influence you, do your thing. Or other times they might say, that's not very aligned with our strategic. So it can really be role-playing and entertaining. And the point of whiteboarding exercises is that there is no recipe you have to go through. It's just they want to see your thinking. They want to see where you're comfortable. They want to see what kind of

Questions you ask, they want to see how you think about a problem, right? So it can be very unique. So that's why I want to refrain from saying, first do this and then do that. And then at the end, you have to get here. Sure, at the end, you kind of have to get to some sort of basic concept. I think if you just ask questions, so this is diverging, right? If we think in the double diamond framework, if you just diverge and diverge and diverge and it's going nowhere, then that's red flag for them, right? So at some point, you have to stop gathering questions

putting the information together and making connections and so on, and then starting converging towards something that sounds like a solution or something that you might want to talk about how you're going to test it, talk about open questions. You want to come up with some sort of skeleton. It could be a wireframe, it could be just a feature list, but it has to be something solution related, right? Nothing has to be anything. I think it's advised.

And so, yeah, now I'm also kind of jumping into the tips area based on my own experience. Just very quickly about my whiteboarding exercises at Miro, maybe because that's my most recent job. It was really interesting. Of course, it was in Miro. I think the whiteboarding exercise was the lesser part where they were shown the thinking. I think the part where I had a take-home assignment was the more interesting one because the

the take-home assignment can really show deeper thinking, right? So you can steal it, you can research it, you can use someone else's UI, whatever. So there's that kind of feeling that, oh, they can cheat. Can you really cheat on your role forever? So they really see your thinking in bigger problems, more time, when you're not stressed, you're not in front of an audience and so on. So those are really, I think, the

the part where they go deeper into understanding how you think about things. But let's stop here. And what are your tips for whiteboarding? And then maybe we can talk briefly about take-home assignments. Well, let's see now. So we just established that whiteboarding challenge is this kind of one of the stages in the interviewing process. Typically, it happens in the middle of the funnel.

So typically it happens after you have the interviews with your hiring manager, and then you would rather have the case data presentation or whiteboard and challenge one of those. So it's usually 45, 60 minutes, like Iona said. Previously in the offline setting, we could have longer sessions and a bit more, I guess, engaging because you would sit together in the same room with the people. And I'm kind of giving this context to what to expect.

if you haven't used or participated before in the whiteboard challenge. So typically you would be invited to this online hour session. Now we're using a lot of the times, all those collaborative tools, Miro or FigJam. And in the beginning, we know by default, you will be given the prompt, some sort of design prompt, design challenge, where it will usually include some sort of brief, very common like to client brief, like this is what we want to build here, a couple of

features we're having in mind. Here is our goal. This is what we're targeting. And then they will just give you the stage to ask questions. So now getting into the sort of tips, tip space for us today during this conversation, my first tip and most important thing I always recommend even now to the community members in the White Boring Challenge is that you always have to be aware of the time. Because one of the constraints we often don't realize is that time is at the essence of this challenge.

especially now with the remote world. Now we have a bunch of meetings in our calendar. We always, you know, move to the next meeting and hire a manager that is going through this challenge with you, most likely have another meeting after your whiteboard challenge. So you have to make sure it's on time. And if at the end of the challenge, in 45, 60 minutes, you didn't even start sketching, it's not going to play good for you, for your role, for your application, I would say. Be very aware. My tip number one would be to always structure your time in 50 minutes time slots.

Again, you can high level think about it as going through the same design thinking stages. But again, just very time limited and using a lot of assumptions, obviously, because you don't have any other ways to learn the data. So first 15 minutes, a typical recommend to spend on understanding. So for example, you would spend on asking questions, making notes, drawing some connections between different types of information, breaking down information like this is what the business goal is. This is what the user needs. These are the assumptions we have. Here are the constraints we have.

etc. As you understood this information, the next 15 minutes, I do recommend you to try to sort of ideate a little bit better. I emphasize ideate, something along those lines. So if you emphasize, maybe you would want to start thinking about what this target user really needs, what are their problems, how likely they are going to achieve X, Y, Z goals. And then if you have a good idea about the business needs, you can also kind of brainstorm some ideas, what it could mean for the business and start organizing these into some sort of

flow charts, maps, et cetera, whatever is the best way for you to go forward. And then the last 50 minutes, I would encourage you to sort of split between ideation and whatever that means for you. And of course, depends on your flow and how you usually think, like Joanna said, where you are strongest.

Sometimes it's a 50-minute slot, sometimes a 20-minute, again, depending on how much time you spent in the beginning. But the last time slot, I would encourage you to really go all in into conceptualizing. So ideating on sticky notes, like how might we solve this problem in X, Y, Z.

Or here are different ways to design for this concept, for this problem. And then obviously sketching. So 10 minutes for sure spent for sketching. And from doing a lot of whiteboarding challenges today with the community, I know that time is always the hardest thing to manage. Even when you don't have anyone to speak to, even when you're just doing it on your own, 45 minutes is...

super hard to do. So 10 minutes is the minimum you should be expecting to spend on the sketches, otherwise you will end up like me in that very first whiteboard challenge I had online, where I just spent three minutes on something very ugly, the sketch was very not representative and it couldn't entail my thinking, obviously in just three minutes. So make sure you have at least 15-10 minutes to do the sketching. I would encourage you to do, especially for the first time ever, do it in pen and paper. It will be much more comfortable for you than in the whiteboard online.

However, I don't know, maybe you can take advantage of AI tools in the future. Maybe they will become better and you can even quickly give the prompt and have a bunch of interesting layouts. Maybe that could be an option. For now, for as of end of 2024, I would still stick to pen and paper for the quality of ideas expression. Plus, it's your own thinking and your own creativity. I think that will be a bit more appropriate.

appreciated during this time. But I guess my first tip, manage time, even practice. Go ahead and just do it on your own time. Spend 45 minutes trying to go through three time slots and make 15 minute time slots and making sure you can accomplish something by the end of 45 minutes. Otherwise, it will be extremely hard for you to show how you think. Express yourself. Go through this process effectively and make sure people understood what you have to offer.

The second tip is something that I've discovered later as I started reflecting on my experience. And it's about really understanding what the company or the team that you're talking to is trying to derive from you. One of the things that sometimes the prompt could be indicative of is what type of designer they're looking for. Sometimes you receive the prompt and it's very straightforward. For example, it could say something like,

design an e-commerce flow, right? Or design a booking flow. These flows are typically self-explanatory. There is no need to reinvent the wheel there. The puzzles are very classic. You know all the puzzles to build, for example, an e-commerce website. However, they might give you an extra challenge, an extra layer to say like, we need this for this XYZ concept, or we need this for the XYZ, I don't know, furniture online or something, right?

address this kind of fear. So they give you a little twist to the very classic funnel, but you don't have to reinvent the wheel. The prompt is just all about, in a way, organizing information and making things structured. But sometimes the company would ask you about the prompt that will be a little bit more challenging, a little bit more, let's say, innovative and creative. And the example of that prompt would be something like design an elevator for a 1,000-floor building.

something you didn't do, right? Or something you have to think about outside the box. Or another example could be something I've heard about designing an ATA machine for like five-year-old kids. How would you design something for a very different target audience and with very different like medium, right? What are the aspects you would be considering for that target audience? And another thing that I remember also learning from researching about the different prompts we have today in the market is that sometimes the prompts would be, or even the

person who's interviewing you. Maybe the prompt could be one of those two, right? So either it is very linear or it's very innovative. But another thing that person that's interviewing you, so for example, hire a manager or a fake PM, whoever, they could have different mindsets. Some of them would be more interested in seeing your sort of ideation side of things. Some of them would be more interested in seeing the execution side of things.

And that's very indicative to the company you're applying to. So you can have like a rule of thumb if you understand the business you're applying to, because typically in the startups, scale-ups, you can expect companies are more sort of grinding. They need things to be more iterative, hands-on, practical, and they would follow some sort of, I don't know, agile scrum processes. You would expect these type of companies expecting you to show you the result in the end of this challenge. Sometimes companies especially...

bigger enterprises, they're more into some sort of ideating mindset. So they want to see you shine through design thinking, emphasizing with the users, coming up with creative ideas, outside of the box ideas, right? Some more innovative vision type of thinking. You can ask the question from the fake PM you're collaborating with. You can ask the question from them, like what type of result you're expecting me to do? Or maybe what result would you benefit from learning from me the best? I can kind of go into more practical ways.

down way, right? Or I can do a bit more ideation. What type of ideation would you expect me to go through? Very often they will tell you that do whatever you usually do, what's more common for you. And in that case, I recommend you to go with a roll of a thumb and a kind of critical think what type of company it is, what are likely the things they expect me to do. But I'm

Sometimes they can give you an answer and that could simplify a lot of the sort of struggles for you in the process, especially when you're rumbling and you need some sort of North Star vision understanding where should I spend my energy and time more at, right? So yeah, my tip here is to be aware about what type of prompt you're receiving. What is it more about?

Is it more about organizing information or is it about more ideating and coming up with a creative solution to something I typically don't think about? Depending on type of prompt you get, you might spend more time on different stages. For example, if it's about innovation, more likely you would want to spend time on brainstorming, creative thinking, like sticky notes, connecting the dots, etc. Whereas for the simplification or structuring things, you might want to spend more time on business thinking, right? Measuring things.

And plus, ask this PM or hiring manager which side of the process you want me to spend more time on. That helps you a little bit to stay focused on the things that would help them the most. And in my experience, generally, the best companies are those companies that are transparent about what they expect from the candidate. They are very about transparency.

the perfect fit, they are aware about who they are looking for, and they tell you upfront, we need somebody who's more on the craft things. Then you will spend time showing, you know, what kind of craft designer you are. If they want more strategic designer, you would spend time showing how strategic you are, right?

they will give you a fair chance to expose the skills that are necessary to them. And then they will compare those skills among different candidates and see which one fits them the best. So I think it's also very indicative if these companies are open about what they expect from you and who they're looking for. I guess that's it on my side. What are there other tips that you can think about?

I think you covered a lot of very interesting things. I would talk about take-home assignments next. I was about to jump into my own experience. Take-home assignments have always been controversial because, right, so they're taking a lot of time from your own

time and are not paid and designers tend to hate them because sometimes you have to invest like 10 hours and nobody pays you. Some companies are very, very ethical and they pay you for the take-home assignments. That's great. We want to see more of that. But on the other hand, you really want to build some empathy for the

company because they're going to hire someone that they're going to probably pay a lot of money for a long time, ideally. And so they really have to kind of make sure that they get how you're thinking about things, that you're the right person. It's hard to know if someone is the right person for the role from one hour whiteboard exercise and two, three interviews, right? It's hard. And maybe their past work speaks for itself, but that's also kind of fuzzy sometimes, right? So

There's a lot of, I would say, ambiguity around hiring in general. So I do understand the need for take-home assignments. Talking about home assignments, I kind of try to understand them and build empathy for the people who are hiring. Yeah, my experience has been pretty fun. Like if you take some time to invest in experimenting with that prompt and the problem space, sometimes it's even fun, right? So, and again, like in my role at Miro, I had, of course, a Miro board where I

could put all the interesting things relating to the problem space. I had a mood board. I was like just playing around with what this felt almost felt like a creative exercise, right? So I didn't perceive it as something that was horrible. It was like if you're not excited for the take-home assignment, right? How will you be excited for that role when you start working in it, right? So there has to be a level of excitement or maybe I'm just too generous in how I think about things.

What has been your experience? What are some tips you can share around take-home assignments? I am a bit the opposite. I'm definitely a bit more critical about the Home Deck challenges. I do understand the need for companies to evaluate better the designers. I do understand the need for them to see you inside out, like understand the craft. Especially this role is requiring a lot of craft skills, like design.

How do you organize your Figma files? How do you name your layers? How do you collaborate? What kind of structures you have? What kind of layouts you explore? So I understand the need where companies need to see you really visual ideating a lot, the range of your thinking. So I understand that part. But I think first and foremost, if this challenge is unpaid, plus if it

is related to their team, to their company. So let's say redesign our web page or I didn't redesign this product parts, then it's a huge red flag for me. And I personally wouldn't do this at this stage of my career. Maybe if I would be a bit more early stage, I would consider this as a great practice, but I don't need this right now in my life. For example, I know that my time is worth...

this much and obviously as the mom of the kid and also a bunch of other things i'm doing it's just really not sustainable for me to do this for example if i'm interviewing today and somebody's asking that part of our process is doing the home tech challenge the very first question i would ask them is

what didn't I show you yet that I could possibly find a way to show you in a different way? For example, if the team would say, we need to know how you organize your files or how many explorations you did, I would say, let me jump on the Figma file that I worked on, I don't know, XY project and show you how I did this. I can walk you through everything

I can literally replicate the same process, but maybe without taking those 10 hours, I don't know, 20 hours of doing it. I'm, I guess, more privileged in this stage of my career because I feel like I've been around a little bit and I know what I'm doing. So I am confident. And if the company is not willing to be open to explore different ways to show those sites, I probably would, I don't know,

I don't know. It really depends on the conversation, of course. But I'm more confident to ask and challenge back, do we really need to do this home tech challenge? I'm still open to, for example, if they give like a two, three hours smaller exercise, I can still probably do this, especially if the challenge is interesting. For example, for a hackathon or something like that. I think it would be quite interesting, you were sharing that you have to be excited. I think you're right.

but maybe it depends on the challenge you receive and the conditions. So for example, if it's paid and if it's not like 10 hours plus, so it doesn't require you to redesign the whole thing, but maybe do a quick exploration around specific questions, redesign this navigation bar or something. Maybe then it could be a more exciting piece. However, if it's like redesigned a big product, not paid 10 hours, etc. These days, I would be very hesitant to do this. What do you think?

I mean, I agree. It shouldn't be like 20 hours shouldn't be like the redesign of their product. That's unethical, right? So I think that for starters, take home assignments shouldn't be relating to the product that you would be working on. I think that's an ethical check that needs to be in there.

They should be from a different industry or field or problem space, right? So I agree with that. I do believe that if you have the luxury, and I think you said something very interesting. What is it that you don't yet trust? And then let's work with that, right? I think many companies, maybe they don't even have the depth of understanding how they can optimize this process. So they're going for these kind of well-known stages because that's the only thing they know, right? But if you challenge them, you're like, look,

I'm going to be a partner for you. What is it that you want to learn more about? Let's unpack that. That was also something that came up in my recruitment process at Miro. One of the things I showed in my portfolio was kind of not the greatest UI. And so there was a question about, is this person also skilled in UI design? And so that came up. And then I prepared another part of my portfolio with projects where I had more UI autonomy, and I didn't have to work within the

boundaries of an ugly system and then they were like oh okay so she has a sense of aesthetics and she can also do pretty ui right so this happens and it's a conversation and i think i really loved your point about being a partner and trying to uncover what's their worry and i think you can also like

I've asked that question intuitively, not like with this intentional vibe before. Like, is there something that you're worried about? And for example, in my interviews with EA Sports, they were worried about my influencing career. They were like, when do you have time? Like, why would you not prioritize the influencing work? Like, can you handle a full-time job and be committed when you're doing so well? Yeah.

on your own like why would you want a job and so we talked about it and I told them that for me the craft is more important than the conversations about the craft right so I have to design in order to be able to talk about design I'm actually more passionate about solving problems than I am about speaking about this right so we had a conversation it was honest it was authentic it was sometimes uncomfortable but that was point of it so I loved your point I really want to just talk

highlighted. I think if the take-home assignment is ridiculous, say no. I think it also kind of comes down to how much you want that role, right? How flexible are you? Like, if it's a job that you are not confident about wanting anyhow, then maybe this is kind of the thing where you say, you know what?

I'm better off trying to search for something that feels more aligned with me. If it's like the job of your dreams, maybe you don't want to lose it because they have this in the process. And I don't know. It's just I'm a flexible person. Maybe I'm wrong. But I do agree with the points you've made. Yeah. And I don't have necessarily other tips.

what i've learned from my experience so far is that you really want to show some personality in this like i know we're all tired about show personality in your portfolio show personality but i think if you go out of the checklist path and just try to do something creative they're also going to appreciate that right so is there a unique way in which you could

approach this problem and just be brave more than you would normally be in the constraints of a company because this is also a creativity exercise. This is also a place where you have more freedom. Sometimes like UiPath had take-home assignments about space travel, right? You can meet that kind of absurd prompt

with more creative approach to solving it, right? So maybe you go out in space to run interviews. So I don't know, just be creative as much as you can because that's where you have the boundaries more flexible, probably for the last time before joining a company and then boundaries and context comes in. So yeah, I would say we've touched on a lot of points but I personally think

feel that we need to kind of have a follow-up for both of them, like maybe a separate episode about whiteboarding and a separate one about take-home assignments. Until then, do you want to add anything to this topic now? No, actually, you answered my question. I wanted to ask you, like, what do you think about how to stand out, how to be confident, how to manage time, all that stuff. But you did just answer that because you're right. We need to be brave because if you understand, again, the funnel through which people are going through with portfolios, it's straightforward. You have to stand out. There is no other way.

But with your how-to challenge, typically you would have five people probably taking the same challenge. And you want to be somebody people remember, somebody people realize, oh, she has something to offer, something new, interesting angle, right? You have to embrace your strong sides. You have to understand what you can offer that nobody else can offer and try to go all in into it. But also add a little bit of a critical thinking to this.

Because if you know what type of company you're applying to, you might understand the sorts of their challenges they're experiencing. Very often, if you talk about the rule of a thumb, startups typically lean more towards like very proactive doers, hands-on people, whereas the

bigger companies, more enterprise-based companies. They would look for people with a strong storytelling skills, strategy skills, design thinking skills. UI will probably be very well established in the bigger companies. So it really depends, but always try to use your critical thinking plus understand the context of the business to choose what angle to use for your home tech challenge.

And I guess the very last tip here that I will add is always trying to understand what presentation you're building. Very often for the Home Tech Challenge, you will be asked to do the presentation. Sometimes they will ask you to send the file. Maybe that's a question you should be asking before you accept the challenge. So will it be doing the presentation or should I just send my Figma file? But

Most likely, you will be asked to do the presentation. If it's about the presentation, remember this. You have to follow the storytelling structure for the presentation. You don't want to fall into that, again, reporting style for the presentation when you just go through the process. You really want to make sure...

you tackle the most important problem and you explain exactly how you do this with your critical thinking, showing your personality, showing your unique selling value proposition. So remember the presentation is important. I even recommend you to, as soon as you understand what you're designing, right? Here's the problem. I will focus on this and this and this. Jump through, like forget about the UI for a second. Think about the structure of your presentation, design your presentation, thinking about the puzzles of your story, and then go back

And it will help you to ideate and build this prototype in a more structured way. You will not need to build a bunch of features there. You'll focus on the things that actually highlights the storytelling, highlights the problem you're solving, right? It will help you to be more efficient and pragmatic when you're planning your time. Designing the presentation as soon as you understand what you're building. That would be the last tip here. And I guess we can wrap it at that.

Thank you so much to everyone who tuned in for this episode. I think we need follow-ups and I really am excited to learn from you all what else you want us to talk about. As you know by now, if you've listened to previous episodes, we try to be relevant and have conversations that are meaningful and are helping.

the design community. So send us your ideas. You can submit them in Spotify. If you want to support us with our honest US talks, you can review us or just send a nice message. I think we can wrap it up. So thanks everyone who joined and see you in the next episode. And if you want to explore more episodes, you can also listen to the past ones. Bye everyone. Bye bye.