I bring one solution, although typically it has been developed in iterations with the customer.

For example, if working on a visual identity, I'll use 3-5 style tiles to hone in on their overall desire for look/feel, and after getting their feedback on the style tiles, present one visual mockup.

If implementing a feature/workflow, I give them one solution, but typically do a whiteboard session with stakeholders early on so that we know the general direction that they're interested in heading.

Love the Rand Paul quote. Source?

My process starts with lots of hand sketches to go wide and get the ideas out. From there, we typically evaluate as a team and choose a concept or a few concepts to take to higher fidelity. I do these in either sketch or a quick and dirty HTML/Bootstrap type prototype (Depending on what I'm trying to prove out). If they're done in sketch, they typically become the basis for a high-fidelity mockup (less rework in the wireframe>hifi transition.)

I feel like the commenter above didn't actually watch the whole talk (to be fair, it's an hour long). Before he got to the "Fire them" rant, Mike did spend a long time talking about what we should all be doing to teach young designers.

BTW i do recommend watching the whole thing. It wandered a bit, but lots of good stuff in there.

this makes me sad.

We use trial projects in all of our hiring activities -- not only for designers and developers, but also for support staff like marketing, accounting, admin assistants.

Our design challenge/trial project has been the same for the past few years. We send the designer a creative brief for a mobile application (we use the same one each time) and ask them to do wireframes and 1 or 2 visual design mockups of key interfaces. We designed the challenge so it could be completed to a reasonable degree in roughly 8 hours; many candidates choose to put in more time (16-20) and come up with knockout results.

We do not pay for trial projects; however the project is near the end of a mulit-step interview process and we only issue a trial project if we feel that the candidate is a very strong contender and likely to succeed. It's not worth their time or ours, otherwise.

We have a rubric that we use to score projects. This is helpful for evaluating candidates against one another, and also for comparing challenges over time (i.e. how does candidate x stack up against candidate y from a year ago??) The rubric isn't the be-all-end-all, but it's helpful to have a standard to evaluate against, rather than just gut feeling.

We make sure candidates know that the trial challenge will only be used for the purposes of evaluating their skill, that we will not be using any part of it in current or future client work.

Deep Focus. http://open.spotify.com/user/spotify/playlist/2ujjMpFriZ2nayLmrD1Jgl

There is a human-centered design program local to me (most of its graduates are headed towards digital industries of one sort or another) that requires their grads to create beautiful printed portfolios. The portfolios not only include screenshots & mockups of finished work, but process documents -- workflows, IA, personas, etc. They are large, expensive books, printed on heavy stock.

When interviewing these candidates, to me it is always delightful to see the pride and care that goes into these books. Candidates definitely ought to have an online portfolio too, but the printed books definitely get my attention and speak to the attention to detail and thoroughness of the candidate's preparation.

TED Radio Hour 99% Invisible Startup Reply All This American Life The Moth Radio Hour APM Marketplace Invisibilia

Atomic Object, a software product consultancy in Michigan, has openings in Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids, and Detroit.

We believe the best software comes from integrated, poly-skilled teams of designers and developers working together. You'll typically get involved in projects early, working on product design, user experience, information architecture, interaction design, and more. We expect our designers to have a philosophical bent toward validation and research. We use tools like lightweight user research and provisional personas to form hypotheses at the beginning of projects and then confirm our assumptions using paper prototypes, mock-ups and usability testing before, during and after development.

https://atomicobject.com/careers/software-designer