Overview
Rehearse interview responses until you can't get it wrong.
Specifically designed for software engineers, this website would allow users to practice their responses to technical interview questions. A unique feature is the feature where users can replay their responses.
January 2024 - Feb 2024
Sole designer. Role included researching the user issues, understanding the information flow, creating wireframes, and later on-mockups of the app itself.
Audience for this website is software engineers who are looking to improve their interview performance.
Executive Summary
The challenge
Interviews are hard, and often stress-inducing for a lot of people. There are plenty of resources out there for interview practice questions, but when it comes to practicing for the video questionnaire, or the actual face-to-face interview, there's not much that will help you to improve your responses.
The solution
A website that simulates an interview-like environment by asking technical questions with a follow-up component. Each section is recorded and you're able to review your responses afterwards. Since this is the MVP, only the basic features have been designed and built, with the upgrade coming after user testing occurs.
Researching problem place and empathising with the user
Conducted some desktop research to find out how people practice for their job interviews nowadays. I recognised and made a mental note of the feelings people had as they completed interviews, whether face-to-face or video interview.
I broke down the sequence that had already been created by the software engineer and added in some necessary steps to ensure the smooth flow of action from one page to the next.
After receiving and implementing feedback on the wireframes and user flows, I began to create high-fidelity versions of the designs. This slowly began to bring the ideas to life.
Researching problem place and empathising with the user
I started with doing some desktop research to understand how people usually like to practice for their interviews and the associated pain points with doing so.
I looked into competitor applications to see where they were doing well and where they had gaps that we could fill.
Designed the ideal user experience through wireframes
The software engineer I worked with had already created a basic flow as well as the basic UI elements to enable a user to step through the flow. Since these were only placeholder elements, I worked together with him to understand how this application might be adapted to be suitable for a software engineer audience.
I created some wireframes for a desktop website and these captured the user flows that would be necessary for the MVP version. This included the landing page, the customisation of questions and the recording pages. In future, there might be more features, such as extra information on the landing page, an onboarding process, and a sign up page etc. The wireframes were edited a couple of times feedback was received.
Created high-fidelity prototypes with various scenarios
I created a simple design system that consisted of the typography and type scale, colour palette and components. This would enable me to reuse components repeated across the pages and set me up for making changes easily. I applied some graphics to make the website look more interesting and engaging and in future, will also add in some animations.
Once the beta version is released and tested, feedback will be gathered from users and this will be analysed and implemented to improve the websites' ability to meet the needs of users practicing for their interviews.
I like doing things in an orderly way and started off the high-fidelity design step with creating a simple design system. However, I learnt that sometimes, you don't have to start with a design system right away. Instead, it may be better to iterate upon the design a little bit first and then come back to doing the design system properly.
It doesn't have to be perfect the first time around. It's more important to get started and try out some ideas, so at least you are making some progress in that way.
Some designs are simply not feasible from a technical perspective. I decided to leave some ideas in the backlog for future, and created a simpler design that was easier to implement for the time being, especially since this is the beta version.
© Jennifer Kouch 2024 | UX Designer | jennifer.kouch888@gmail.com