(was asked on TechStars forum but I have answered it numerous times before and after)
My co-founder and I are building a consumer-facing mobile product that needs to be simple and engaging to use. We’re both aesthetically-challenged tech geeks, so we’re looking for illustrators, interaction designers, and game mechanics gurus for help. We’ve reached out to several people in our network, but are not sure how to evaluate their skills and portfolios. Other than gauging passion for and understanding of our product vision, what questions should we ask and what measures of success should we look at?
My response:
Being a UX designer myself, my perspective is probably biased, but here it is—
Every decent UX designer is ultimately a native problem solver capable to understand the technical complexity of the application while craving to translate it into visual appeal and simplicity of operation.
So when looking at the portfolios, ask designers about the challenges in each relevant project there. What approaches did they try before finding the final solution? What led them to this decision? How and when do they iterate their designs? Based on what metrics? Do they look at metrics at all when designing? At what stages of the design process do they involve users? Why then?
Basically you’ll be evaluating the candidates’ thought process, whether they are just capable of producing aesthetically pleasing layouts (assuming they are) or do they also strive - and have a know how - to understand the users.
As for measures of success, here is an interesting read from HBR http://bit.ly/94QlQl
If interested in reading further conversation, it can be found at http://ask.techstars.org/how-do-you-evaluate-ux-interaction-designers
Design by Simon Fletcher. Powered by Tumblr.
© Copyright 2010
