Case study: Surviving a UX design challenge and the heat of Rio de Janeiro
And the worst of all wifi connection, while taking some rest 🏖️
“So you are on a long vacation, right?” People watching my Instagram posts. Well…no. But I decided I needed a break and get focused both on enjoying my stay in a new, wonderful city while continuing my role as a mentor and my slow pursuit of a job/project that fits my aspirations and new reality. Again, this was the beginning of 2019 when working remotely as a UX/UI Designer was stranger (although it was just 2 years ago).
It would require an open mindset and the will to choose you between many others located close to a specific office.
Wifi connection on our apartment was below 1mb. I had to use my phone data and run to a store nearby each time I needed more mb. The hardest part was dealing with zoom videocalls while teaching online.
I wasn’t in a hurry, and I was willing to self-evaluate myself on the interview process. Beyond everything, more than traveling, what I was looking for was a more balanced lifestyle. Work and learn when needed, and enjoy the time I had left on the day.
UX Challenges were part of a couple of interviews I had, not the most, but the ones that were more complex/demanding, which doesn’t equal better.
Design challenges are an opportunity for designers to flex their critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
Types of design exercises
Sometimes it’s just one of these. Sometimes it’s both. Unfortunately, in this case, I had to make both 🐙
Most large companies use this kind of exercise (Facebook, Google, etc.), and some startups and agencies.
Take-home
- Exercise with specs on a problem you should solve
- Usually, they take 1/2 days to be done, depending on your availability
- Google, Youtube, and asking people is allowed
Whiteboard
- 20-40 minutes and a whiteboard (being remote: Miro/Mural/any prototyping tool)
- Collaborative with 1/2 interviewers and a couple of extra people watching
- Involves thinking and communicating clearly (and fast)
What to focus on
Inspiration and what to do
Practice makes the master. And same as interviews, you should be ready to make 1, 2, 3, 4…47…71 challenges. Fake it till you make it. Meanwhile, everything is valid (ebooks, google, youtube). In the process, you are training your brain muscles which are the ones that need to be soft every day.
This book is super straightforward
Find it here: https://productdesigninterview.com/
As I said, I had to do both exercises. So, first, it was about the take-home exercise. My previous exercises were done a couple of years before. I didn’t have the experience I have today so it was a completely different scenario.
My wifi connection was so poor and unstable that I had to avoid the temptation of procrastinating, being just one square from the beach, and the temptations of such a wonderful city. Now, that is a challenge…but I wanted to work for a cool and completely remote company which was another challenge itself.
In the meantime, before getting the specs, I watched a couple of youtube videos. I googled from basic to advanced related terms. I downloaded a couple of .pdfs (some of which I read and some of which I did not).
The problems to solve
“Your solution should solve 2 problems:”
- Problem 1: How do PM users set the values of each metadata (Impact, ROI, Effort, Strategy) for each feature of the backlog? Show us your solution of how this should fit in the existing product.
- Problem 2: How do PM users set the universal weights for Impact, ROI, Effort, Strategy to be used in the calculation of the Score?
How my UX Design Challenge looked like
Take into account this project was focused on a project management tool. I cannot show all the information and the lenght of the post would be huge and boring so here it’s just a blueprint of my work.
I was given a maximum of 5 hours to complete this challenge so it doesn’t have to be so complex. More about the thinking and the process itself. Anyway, I spent a couple of hours more while educating/updating myself a bit.
1) Benchmarking
First step. Understanding the problem. I made a small research about prioritization. Found some related articles. Many were focused on one specific area. This one caught my attention as it was featured on the NN Blog, which is a universal reference in the UX field: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/prioritization-matrices/
Product Prioritization Matrix (basically excel files with formulas) lets a PM like Robin (or most humans with some background in Office) prioritize and control projects without getting nuts. It’s accessible and can be quite easily updated, but it lacks improvement opportunities. This matrix was great to put me into her shoes and think of an interface and how would it feel to solve this problem without using apps or websites
Then I looked for some visual references on sites such as Dribbble or Behance while I tried to understand the screens you provided. I also read more about Project Management related stuff (graphics and tables below) which was part of my introduction to prioritization. The chosen tags which displayed more relevant results were ‘project management and ‘prioritize’. Found common patterns
Insights found
- There are different scales and scores. But there’s more accuracy (or it’s more important/eye-catchy) watching at the total scores for each task
- Prioritization can’t be perfect and it may generate problems as it’s developed by just one person involving a lot of people. It’s important that everybody knows the reasons why a project manager set priorities in a specific way
- Democracy (voting) could avoid conflicts but the PM cannot involve superiors in each decision
- ‘Handcrafted’ prioritization tools help establish a route but they (in most of the cases) lack visibility. No feedback, emails, or notifications updates
- Labeling scores was a common pattern. If there’s no ‘education’ behind the scores usage they may be used on the right panel (not necessarily on the table) to give more emphasis (e.g. 5 — very high, 1 — very low)
2) Analyzing the Persona (previously shared)
I took a look at Robin’s profile, the Persona you provided. I found she must be a Pro Product Feature Prioritization Matrix user. Software like Outlook or having a Dell would lead me to think about someone quite open to create or explore opportunities using excel formulas or anything that comes out from what Microsoft can offer. Even though, it must be rough for her to organize and accomplish her goals having so many emails and pressure. A simpler, more collaborative, and visible system could help her.
3) Wireframing
Problem 1: How do PM users set the values of each metadata (Impact, ROI, Effort, Strategy) for each feature of the backlog? Show us your solution of how this should fit in the existing product.
The option would be added to the right panel (next to the description maybe). I shortened the path to the final Score by using selectable numbers. Default would be 1 as it's the minimum required for the score.
Risk is minimized that way because if it were an input you would be given the option to enter 0 or 999 and require a system validation.
The sum of all fields will show the Score. Colors changing from red to green could add more emphasis as it’s shown on the final number (watch traffic lights, low/medium/high)
Problem 2: How do PM users set the universal weights for Impact, ROI, Effort, Strategy to be used in the calculation of the Score?
The sliders here provide the functionality of changing the values, and visual aid to give you a better sense of how the metadata weight is being split.
I wanted to do the math for the user, and prevent the sum to be different than 100%, so all sliders will be updated each time a value is changed. It can be problematic playing with 4 different values if the PM wants to play a lot with the values so I added a locking mechanism (icon).
The panel could come out as a collapsable filter depending on the hierarchy we would give it. Anyway it can be responsive and I could use something like this using the right panel (which is suitable for mobile devices) I added the ‘’Send for approval’’ option considering Robin pays a lot of attention to her emails and her boss ‘asks why’ a lot regarding her decisions.
She could add his email on tasks she considers may her boss worry. Once she has feedback, she could go back editing the feature if something needs to be changed:
Sending for the review!
So I sent the email with the exercise attached on it and got news…a week later:
- They liked it and it sparked some healthy debate amongst the team. Great! Oh wait, there’s more…
“Could you further describe your process in a presentation?” 😱😱😱
Come on, let’s relax for a while…
Ok so on the same day I had to make the presentation, I was faced with a whiteboard challenge. On all fronts!
Whiteboard Challenge
on each side.
Task
Design a digital ordering system to select dishes from a menu in a restaurant, in a kiosk platform.
What I did
Actually, I don’t remember so much. But I had to make up things live, with 6 people watching at my mouse cursor moving around while sketching rough stuff. I won’t lie. That’s far from sexy or exciting. But that’s closer to reality.
Much close to reality than those 2 options ‘Which UI is better’ posts you get to see on the Linkedin feed. Having said that, it’s important that you can:
- Communicate effectively, being concise
- Make people participate, so you can gain extra time to think and get more ideas (eventually you would work together so…)
- Don’t focus too much on details when drawing. Your words will be more valid than the quality of your wireframes
So what happened?
I got a job offer! BUT, the only issue was I took them around 2 months to decide that and I had already accepted another offer 😂...anyway, I value a lot the experience of working on something like this because everything is learning and it’s great to have at least a conversation with companies/people you think are worthy/experts.
Any feedback should be welcome to keep growing no matter at what stage in your career you are. And well…I’m more of a self-learner/doer/learn on the fly human being. There was a clear motivation behind this opportunity and that’s why I tried to go the extra mile.
Of course, you cannot make everything happy working on these things all the time. But you can choose wisely and point to the place you think is appropriate 🌎
