Hire the Top 3% of Freelance UI/UX Designers

Working with a UI/UX designer is an exciting stage of a digital product’s journey. All the components start coming together, and all the intangibles begin to materialize.

But finding a great UI/UX designer can be challenging, especially when it comes to defining a UI/UX designer’s job description. To a large degree, the role is a blend of these two: User Interface (UI) Designer Job Description and User-Experience (UX) Job Description. However, the roles can get confused, and the project’s deliverables and the optimum outcome may end up being hard to define.

To get the best out of the hiring process and the UI/UX designer you will be working with, it’s best to understand what they do and how they do it.

Let’s take a deep dive into what a UI/UX designer is and what the best journey into hiring a UI/UX designer may entail, from portfolios to responsibilities, from what to look for to interview questions.

What Is a UI/UX Designer?

At the risk of stating the obvious, the role of a UI/UX designer is a blend of a UI (user interface) designer and a UX (user experience) designer. Typically, these are separate roles where the designers work on different aspects of a product at different stages.

Fundamentally, UI designers are concerned with how the information and components in a digital product are laid out as well as how they behave in accordance with the users’ needs and interactions with their device. The role’s responsibilities at the core follow those of an information architect, interaction designer, and a visual designer—rolled into one.

User interface designers are in charge of designing each screen or web page with which a user interacts and ensuring that the UI visually communicates the potential task-completion paths that a UX designer has laid out for them.

Typically, UI designers are also responsible for creating a cohesive style guide and ensuring that a consistent design language is applied across the product. Maintaining consistency between visual elements, such as typography and color scheme, and defining interaction-related behaviors such as how to display error messages fall under the purview of a UI designer.

Click to see full-sized image.

UI designers not only define how to best use layout, visual hierarchy, color, typography, micro animation, and iconography but are also responsible for designing UIs for special needs and standards such as accessibility. Since UI designers are responsible for making UX designers’ visions a reality, many UI designers also have a good understanding of front-end development and may even have some coding skills.

A UX (user experience) designer, on the other hand, strives to understand business requirements and the technical limitations of the project and focuses on serving the core users of the product through rigorous and methodical design. In essence, they are responsible for crafting “the experience” of using your product. UX designers are user-centered, i.e., they put the user in the center of everything they do and practice various design methodologies, frameworks, and processes such as jobs-to-be-done, design thinking, and human-centered design.

UX designers conceive, plan, and conduct user research, which may involve interviews, surveys, and contextual observations, and translate them into sitemaps, information architectures, user flows, customer journeys, wireframes, mockups, and prototypes. The UX designer will also be expected to design the overall functionality of the product and iterate on product designs based on several rounds of moderated or unmoderated user testing.

Click to see full-sized image.

In addition to many essential elements, good design will always take into account a user’s emotional and psychological needs. UX designers not only define the user’s journey with the product but also interpret the purpose and role of the product through persuasive, anticipatory, and emotional design.

It’s crucial to bring into play an effective recruiting process to identify a great UI/UX designer for your project that covers, among other things, product design strategy, user research, wireframing, prototyping, visual design, interaction design, user testing, and analytics. Along with the usual set of requirements, this meticulous process will ensure the candidate is a good fit for your organization.

Some of the responsibilities a UI/UX designer has may entail but are not limited to:

Strategy and Content

• Competitor analysis
• Customer analysis
• Product structure/strategy
• Content development
• User personas
• User research

Wireframing and Prototyping

• User flows
• Wireframing
• Prototyping
• Testing/iteration
• Heuristic analysis

Look and Feel

• Interface layout
• Components library
• Design system
• Styleguide
• Branding and graphic development
• Interaction design
• Interactivity and animation
• Adaptation to required device screen sizes

Execution and Analytics

• Coordination and guidance with visual designers
• UX testing/iteration (moderated and unmoderated)
• Design Sprints and UX workshops
• Development of implementation with developers
• Product usage analytics

What to Look for When Hiring a UI/UX Designer

Once the technical requirements of your project are worked out and you are ready to hire a UI/UX designer, it’s essential to ensure good chemistry with the UI/UX design candidate(s) and get on the same page. Design is a deeply human endeavor. It’s vital to ensure the designer is a team player, an excellent communicator, and a great collaborator.

In a professional design environment, soft skills help designers understand the problems and people they’re working with. To navigate peer and client relationships effectively, designers need soft skills like:

• Role Flexibility: The ability to wear many hats and learn unfamiliar tasks
• Listening: A willingness to hear and understand others’ thoughts
• Collaboration: Sharing skills and ideas with others and valuing theirs in return
• Evaluating Criticism: Sorting through feedback and deciding what’s actionable
• Task Prioritization: Knowing when to do what and the amount of time it takes
• Persuasion: Helping others see and share in a vision

Since this position requires two skill sets rolled into one, it’s best to look for design talent comfortable wearing the hats of a UI designer and a UX designer and who can easily transition between these roles. At the start of a project, they would most likely wear a UX designer’s hat, defining the problem, conducting user research, building prototypes, and doing user testing. Later on, they would switch to wearing a UI designer’s hat, defining the aesthetic, coming up with color schemes, structuring layouts, devising interactions, and building style guides, design systems, and component libraries.

The candidate should have a portfolio of UX design case studies that demonstrate specific strengths and skills with a variety of tools, approaches, and UX deliverables in a UX designer’s toolkit. These would include but are not limited to user research, personas, empathy maps, affinity maps, experience maps, user journeys, user flows, wireframes, wire flows, mockups, prototypes, heuristic analysis, user testing, and usage analytics reports.

Does the designer understand the concept of an MVP (minimum viable product)? MVPs are a way of developing a new product (e.g., a website or a mobile app) with the minimum acceptable features to suit the users. Additional features and design elements are added based on the feedback of real users rather than a designer’s ideas and assumptions. Many of the world’s most popular products have been developed using the MVP process.

Look for relevant education and real-world experience in UX. They should be explicit about their UX skills, the process and toolkit they use, and the kinds of projects in which they specialize. A long list of relevant skills, the tools they use, and how many years of experience they have is less important than their user-centered design process—how the problem was solved.

Their UX portfolio should demonstrate their customer focus, understanding of the business needs, and the context they were designing for, along with a clear articulation of the role they played on each project.

The UX designer half of a UI/UX Designer candidate should employ UX design methodologies in their daily UX design work that include such approaches and processes as design thinking, human-centered design (HCD), and Lean UX. UX design is about following specific methodologies and processes; therefore, the candidate’s portfolio should demonstrate projects where they used one or the other, or a combination of the above approaches.

When it comes to evaluating the UI designer in the candidate, look for relevant education, such as a degree in human-computer interaction (HCI), or equivalent experience in digital interface design. Look for UI designers who follow best practices, conventions and standards, and basic usability principles to ensure that the user interfaces that they create correspond with user needs.

The candidate’s UI portfolio should demonstrate user-centered design solutions with strong visual and interaction design skills. Look for clean, intuitive designs of interfaces and user interface elements for software programs, responsive websites, mobile apps, video games, or TV. They should present a clear structure, easily understandable information hierarchy, intuitive interactions, visual balance, pleasing aesthetics, and well-structured typography that support usability with clear, consistent visual layouts and content structuring.

Ask the candidate about different UI design styles, such as skeuomorphism, minimalism, maximalism, flat design, and material design, and see if the candidate can elaborate on the pros and cons of using each. Do they favor one style over another, and if yes, why?

UI/UX Designer Interview Questions

The following questions and answers should help you with your interviewing process for a UI/UX Designer.

UI Designer Oriented Questions

What are your thoughts about Google’s material design?

Google created material design as a visual language that synthesizes classic principles of good design with the innovation and possibility of technology and science. This question is more specific than a general inquiry and they should address it explicitly.

Professional UI designers who keep their fingers on the pulse of the latest user interface trends and standards will know a lot about material design: its principles, properties, environment, and goals. Hearing the designer’s thoughts should indicate that the candidate is not just following the latest trends because they’re all the rage.

What do you think is the most intuitive user interface ever created?

Many design experts continue to argue over whether intuition-driven user interfaces are a myth. Those who are advocates say learning that the end user describes your user interface as “intuitive” is the highest praise you will ever receive.

This question is a thought-provoking one for any UI designer, and it will allow you to find out whether the designer also thinks it’s a myth or not. More importantly, if the designer does not believe it’s a myth, what would she or he consider the most intuitive user interface created and why?

How would you redesign a well-known user interface?

This question should clarify how a designer thinks as the end user. First of all, the designer has to identify the elements to be redesigned (colors, shapes, sizes, placement, for example), followed up by reasons, not choices, explaining why these elements require a redesign.

Finally, the most critical part of this question should reveal the changes the designer would like to apply to the user interface. Again, backed up by reasoning rather than choices, the designer needs to explain why the proposed changes would look better and how these changes would contribute to a better user experience.

Can you describe an app with the worst ever user interface?

This question is kind of a reverse psychology one. You might as well ask, “What do you think a great user interface looks like?” But the trick is not to make the question too obvious, so the prospective UI designer does not give a general answer.

By describing elements of the worst ever user interface, the designer illustrates his or her design values for such things as the visual hierarchy, typography, the color scheme, the layout, buttons, input boxes, labels, as well as shapes, sizes, and the positioning of these elements. A professional UI designer should always give a detailed explanation of why a particular interface has no chance of pleasing the end user.

Why do you think Sketch has gained such popularity with UI design?

The majority of professional UI designers prefer to design interfaces using Sketch, which was developed specifically for user interface creation, but not for logos, illustrations, or anything else graphics-related.

Nevertheless, it is beneficial to hear why UI designers think Sketch has gained so much popularity in such a short time. Some of the features that Sketch is known for are vector support, a component-based design library system, code-friendly designs, robust export features, customizable grid systems, and more.

UX Designer Oriented Questions

What does it mean to be a great UX designer?

The answer will help you discover what kind of UX designer you may be hiring. While there is no right or wrong answer, a good designer should have in-depth UX knowledge as well as a comprehensive end-to-end UX design process they can talk about. They should be willing to walk you step by step through the approach that guides them to robust working solutions.

Listen for humility, backed by confidence. Do they have a cultivated eye for solutions? Are they passionate about creating delightful user experiences and designing products people love?

Listen for answers that include a discussion around empathy — “walking a mile in a customer’s shoes” (customer journeys) — and a user-centered, user goal-driven approach to designing products.

Describe your design process and what methods you follow.

UX design is constantly evolving and searching for new ways to solve problems. Seasoned UX designers have likely been developing their own approach to the design process and will vary from one designer to another. In general, good UX designers will walk you through a particular process or “toolkit” they follow when approaching a problem or a project. It will likely be a set of steps they will take to solve user problems and create engaging experiences. Listen for both a clear process and the specific steps they take to solve user problems and create engaging experiences.

One overarching theme should be around a user-centric approach to design, so perhaps mention “design thinking,” which follows a thorough understanding of both user and business goals. In general, this is often an iterative design process that is constantly evolving. Key concepts or methods used to carry out this process may include but are not limited to: competitive audits, stakeholder interviews, user research involving interviews and surveys, content audits, information architecture, user personas, business model canvases, mood boards, storyboards, empathy maps, use case scenarios and user flows, customer journeys, wireframes, mockups, and prototypes. They may also mention conducting user testing—moderated or unmoderated, remote or in-person—multivariate testing, eye tracking, click-tracking heatmaps, and other quantitative analytics.

Please provide some examples of your experience dealing with user research and usability testing.

First and foremost, user research is all about understanding your users. A good UX designer will help you design products that work well across a variety of use cases—from mobile to desktop, as well as a wide range of audiences.

A UX designer should be able to elaborate on how they think of and engage in user research. What “lenses” do they use when conducting user research? These “lenses” could be ethnographic studies, field studies and contextual observations, focus groups, surveys, and diary studies.

They should mention details of how they set goals for the research and came up with a research plan, how they approached the organizational aspect, the recruiting of representative users—what kind of research questions they asked and how they analyzed the results. While there is more than one approach to facilitating user research, the designer should have a clear description of the method, the sample size required to gain a meaningful result, and speak to the interpretation of the data.

Look for a UX designer who understands how to measure appropriately by selecting the minimum number of subjects needed to gain an accurate understanding of the research, and who comprehends what they are testing and seeking to understand.

What is your approach to making websites and platforms accessible to all user groups, including users with visual, hearing, and motor disabilities?

Accessibility is a vast topic for UX designers, especially as screens begin to shrink, and we consume and engage in content wherever we go. Designing digital products able to be used anywhere is paramount to a product’s success. When our end user has specific requirements in terms of sensory constraints, the design should facilitate interaction and be even more empathetic.

Take notice if the designer is aware of and follows the World Wide Web Consortium’s “Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.” Have they performed an accessibility analysis on a previous project?

With a focus on accessibility, testing becomes especially important and should be comprehensive. An app or a website should be simple enough to facilitate a clear end goal or user task, and innovative approaches should be used to ensure a user with a disability can interact with the product. Some examples could include using voiceover commands to navigate websites and apps for people with motor disabilities, adding captions to a video which benefits people who are deaf or hard-of-hearing, making content easier to read by screen readers for the blind—or designing an option to use large typography for users with vision impairment.

What does the term “design thinking” mean to you?

Listen for the UX designer to describe it as a user-centered design approach, a process. As Tim Brown, Executive Chair at IDEO, a famed global design consultancy, explains it: “‘Design thinking’ is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.”

Design thinking is a method for the generation of solutions and a practical, creative resolution of problems. It’s about uncovering insights into the unmet needs of your target audience. It’s a form of solution-based or solution-focused thinking, with the intent of producing a constructive future result. Most of all, it’s a “people first” approach—a design process mindset that designs products around people’s needs, motivations, and behaviors.

Who are your design heroes? What are your favorite apps for UX? Explain why.

Every great UX designer has at least a dozen books by design legends on their bookshelf, as well as favorite app designs that they appreciate because of the quality of the UX.

Listening to the reasons why they love their design heroes and favorite apps can reveal a great deal about a designer’s everyday approach to UX—their “design thinking,” sensibility, and taste—and will speak volumes about what kind of UX designer they are.

It’s more important to listen for the “why” than give credence to names or which design guru it is. Nevertheless, here are a few to take note of: Dieter Rams (German industrial designer at Braun), Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive (Apple), Don Norman (best known for his books on design, especially The Design of Everyday Things), Steve Krug, and Alan Cooper.

This also applies to their favorite apps. Again, it’s the “why” that’s important—listen carefully for what in the UX design makes these their favorites—for example, Uber, Instagram, Snapseed, Spotify, Facebook, and Netflix.

Rounding Up the Requirements and Getting Started

At this point, you have defined what you need and whom you would like to work with, so the next and final step is to recap and address the following:

• Scope and deliverables (expected/required)
• Timelines and goals
• Global assumptions (e.g., mobile should be included, exclude testing for IE, etc.)
• Special requirements (e.g., accessibility for the visually impaired, language, etc.)
• Tech and specifications (iOS/Android, REST API, etc.)
• Legal (NDAs, other contracts)