Image credits — Abstract 3d object background. 3d Vector illustration on Adobe Stock

I was actively looking for summer internships in UX Design or Product Design last summer. It was going to be the very first time I participated in a formal design interview which included a portfolio presentation, app critique, and behavioral questions. Being new to everything, I did not know how to prepare for my app critique interview. There were many resources on the internet talking about the “framework”, but I did not know how to get started. In this article, I will talk about how I prepared for it.

What is an App Critique Interview?

In my view, an app critique interview is more like a conversation with the interviewer. Sometimes, the interviewer will choose an app for your to critique or they might give you an option to choose an app and critique it. You talk about the app’s functionality, interaction design, visual design, product thinking, and what works and doesn’t.

Preparing for the interview

I was fortunate enough to get 3 weeks to prepare for my final interview round. During these three weeks, I experimented with many preparation strategies and I am sharing the ones which I thought helped me with my interview. If you have lesser time to prepare for the interview and if all these steps are seeming too much in terms of time and effort feel free to glance over these strategies and pick the ones which you think will benefit you.

Research, Research, and Research

As someone who was not aware of what the app critique interview is and what to expect, I started researching existing articles on the internet. I found many articles which explained the entire process clearly and gave me a headstart. One of my favorite resources is this article by Nishant Panchal —

https://uxdesign.cc/app-critique-framework-for-product-design-interviews-24b64cfad4ab

It clearly introduces you to the process and a framework. I referred to this article many times while I was building my own framework. I also saw some videos on youtube where some designers explained the interview process. There were also videos of people doing a mock app critique. These videos were good for an introduction but later, as I got an idea of the process and the interview, I decided to only stick with the article I mentioned above.

Studying Design Guidelines

A vital part of the app critique interviews is knowing the design vocabulary. As someone who isn’t from a design background, I often struggled to find the right words while doing mock critiques. Going over the Android Material Design guidelines and IOS Human Interface guidelines helped me understand different interaction design patterns, their names, their usage, and their functionality. This helped in the design interview as I could easily identify a design component and discuss if that component was appropriate for the use case.

Android Material Design Guidelines

IOS Human Interface Guidelines

Laws of UX and 10 Usability Heuristics

While doing mock critiques, I could detect the usability issues but was lacking the right keywords to convey my thoughts. To improve, I read the different Laws of UX on this amazing website which summarizes and explains them very clearly. This prevented me from critiquing something randomly, I was backing my critique with laws that have pre-existing research.

Laws of UX

Often times during the mock critique, I used to blank out and did not have content to talk about. For this, I read the 10 usability Heuristics by Nelson Norman Group so that even if I did not know what to talk about, I could always start looking for these Heuristics and speak about them. This also helped me with my UX Vocabulary

10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design

Creating a framework

During the first few rounds of mock app critique interviews, I received common feedback that my process was haphazard and all over the place. So, I decided to create a framework and stick to that. Initially, I started following the framework given by Nishant Panchal in his article which I mentioned above. As I went ahead with practice mock interviews I started modifying the framework to build my own. Having a framework gave a structure to my app critique and made it easy for the interviewer to understand the story I was telling. It also kept my head clear during the interview process without the fear of rambling or boring the interviewer.

Practice with Friends and Yourself

Articulating my thoughts using the correct UX vocabulary and successfully following the framework for app critique only happened to me after I performed many mock interviews. I reached out to design mentors, and my seniors and asked for their time. I got their feedback and it helped me improve and become better each time. I also practiced app critique by myself and recorded the sessions to go back and assess what did I do wrong. I picked the 10 most frequently used apps that I was familiar with and did a critique session for them. I also made sure that I do not over-practice. Over-practicing might sound like I had byhearted the critique.

Learning to talk about “Why” instead of “What”

While I was doing the initial rounds of my mock interviews, an important piece of feedback I was receiving from my mentors and my seniors was that I was just talking about what the mobile app is about. App critique is not just walking the interviewer through the application and explaining to them what it does, but instead, it is about “WHY” you think the designers made that particular design decision and Why do you agree/disagree with it?

Thanks a lot for reading!

If you are looking for some information on your portfolio presentation interview, here’s an article was written by me —

https://uxplanet.org/portfolio-presentation-for-ux-design-internship-interviews-808c571b7119

Feel free to connect with me on Linkedin to let me know if the article was helpful or if you have any questions or if you just want to talk about design.