Demand for Digital Product Designers Continues to Expand
As companies focus on creating user-friendly solutions that boost engagement and drive product adoption, demand for digital product designers continues to rise. In fact, job growth for web developers and digital designers (including digital product designers) is projected to grow by 8 percent between 2023 and 2033, faster than the average for all occupations.
Despite demand, finding the right designer can be challenging. The ideal candidate will have technical design expertise, strategic thinking skills, and a thorough understanding of user behavior to deliver results. This guide provides actionable strategies to help you hire a digital product designer who can drive innovation and create designs that align with your company’s objectives.
What Attributes Distinguish Quality Digital Product Designers From Others?
Hiring an exceptional digital product design candidate starts with gaining insights into what separates the best product designers from the rest. These designers are instrumental in ensuring products meet customer expectations and business goals. Here are the specific skills to look out for:
UI/UX Design Skills
The best digital product designers integrate UI and UX design principles to create intuitive, user-friendly interfaces that enhance usability. With a strong eye for graphic design, they also ensure that products are visually engaging, on-brand, and aesthetically cohesive. These designers use tools like Figma, Sketch, or Adobe XD to produce wireframes, prototypes, and final designs that prioritize user needs while achieving business objectives. Look for portfolios that demonstrate an iterative design process and a track record of solving complex user challenges.
Interaction Design and Microinteractions
Details matter, and great designers get interaction design and microinteractions. Using tools like Principle or After Effects they craft animations and transitions that guide the user. For example, a well-designed hover effect or progress bar can improve the user experience by giving feedback. Thoughtfully designed microinteractions not only improve usability but add a layer of delight that keeps users engaged and connected to the product.
Analytical Problem Solving
Designers with analytical skills can interpret user behavior data and turn it into actionable insights. They use tools like Google Analytics and Hotjar to find patterns and issues that affect engagement. For example, a designer might analyze clickstream data to find a bottleneck in a checkout flow, then propose and implement changes to simplify navigation or increase conversions. A good candidate can explain how their data-informed decisions led to tangible results, e.g., reducing drop-off rates.
Proficiency in Design Systems
Maintaining design consistency across platforms is crucial, and the best designers are skilled at building and scaling design systems. Familiarity with frameworks like Material Design or the ability to create custom systems ensures visual harmony and efficient handoff to developers. A well-implemented design system not only improves collaboration between teams but also speeds up development by providing reusable components and clear design guidelines.
How Can You Identify the Ideal Digital Product Designer for You?
Finding the right digital product designer means understanding your project’s needs and evaluating candidates accordingly. Designers have different experience levels, and the right one depends on your goals, timeline, and budget.
Define your project goals to determine the level of expertise required:
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Junior Designers: These candidates are best suited to tasks like updating existing interfaces or assisting senior designers. Junior designers should have at least one year of experience and a strong UX/UI foundation.
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Mid-level Designers: Designers at this level can manage projects like user flows or designing features for new digital products. They typically have two to four years of experience and can translate user insights into actionable designs.
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Senior Designers: With over five years of experience, senior designers provide leadership and strategic direction. They can manage large projects like end-to-end product design or building a design system. Look for candidates with a track record of mentoring teams and driving innovation.
Clearly defining your objectives will help you hire a digital product designer who aligns with your company’s vision.
How to Write a Digital Product Designer Job Description for Your Project
A good job description will attract the best talent by defining responsibilities, required skills, and project scope. Candidates should know how their role fits into your company’s goals. Specify that the designer will create user-centric solutions, work across teams, and use analytics to refine designs.
The job post should highlight technical skill requirements like proficiency in Figma and Sketch and design systems like Material Design. Beyond technical skills, look for:
Evidence of Strategic Thinking
Digital product designers must align their work with the company goals while anticipating future business and user needs. This requires a long-term vision and seeing how designs evolve with the product and market demands. For example, a designer might create scalable layouts and components that accommodate future features like new user flows or product expansions. Strategic thinkers proactively identify opportunities to optimize existing designs to support business goals like improving conversion rates through data-driven changes.
Collaboration and Communication Skills
Digital product designers often work closely with cross-functional teams, including developers, product managers, and marketers. Strong communication skills are essential for aligning design concepts with technical feasibility and stakeholder goals. Look for experience in Agile environments where collaboration and adaptability are critical to success.
What Are the Most Important Digital Product Designer Interview Questions?
Asking the right questions during interviews is important for assessing a designer’s expertise, problem-solving approach, and ability to balance user needs with business goals. The best answers demonstrate technical skills, strategic thinking, and adaptability.
Can you describe a design project where you solved a user pain point?
Look for candidates to give you examples of how they approach design. A great answer will show how they incorporated user research, iteration, and data to solve a problem. You could ask them to walk you through how they approached a past project. Additionally, listen to how they tracked the impact of their solution over time, demonstrating their ability to evaluate long-term effectiveness.
How do you collaborate with developers to implement designs?
Strong candidates will detail how they document designs using tools like Zeplin or Figma and ensure clear communication during handoffs. They will describe resolving conflicts between design intent and technical feasibility, such as adjusting layouts to accommodate development constraints without compromising user experience. Applicants should also mention how they maintain ongoing collaboration during development, such as participating in stand-ups or addressing implementation issues post-launch. They should also mention how they maintain ongoing collaboration during development, such as participating in stand-ups or addressing implementation issues post-launch.
What’s your approach to incorporating user feedback into designs?
In design, being able to take feedback and adapt is key. Imagine a candidate telling you about usability testing that showed a considerable drop off during checkout because people didn’t understand their payment options. They were able to go back and completely redesign the payment page to be more visual and offer more payment options, resulting in a 20% increase in completed transactions. Great candidates will be able to talk about how they handle conflicting feedback—users wanting one thing and businesses wanting another—and be able to make design decisions that balance both while keeping the overall goals of the project in mind.
How do you balance user needs with business goals?
Look for examples that show a holistic approach. A strong response might involve integrating revenue-generating features, like upsell prompts, into a seamless user experience. A perfect example is onboarding. A great answer will tell a story about how they researched and found that most users were dropping off of onboarding. They might talk about how they redesigned onboarding to focus on the most important features and settings, and how that increased retention by a certain percentage. This shows a process and a result.
You should also try to get them to talk about how they approach adding revenue-driving features, such as upsell and cross-sell. They might show how they worked with the sales team to prioritize features and button placement and how they used data to test and implement features that met high user satisfaction and high bars while also driving business results. How do they measure the success of features like these? Do they have a dashboard to manage them?
Can you describe a time you created or scaled a design system?
Great design applicants will be proud to show that they invest time and energy into maintaining a design system. Ask them about a time they implemented a design system, like a component library, and how it saved the company time and money by reducing vars across the app. They might talk about how it helped maintain brand consistency in 3rd party apps and APIs. They should also be able to talk about how their design system has adapted to new product initiatives and changing team needs. How has it changed and grown? How do they approach adding new products to the product suite?
Why Do Companies Hire Digital Product Designers?
Companies hire digital product designers to create customer-centric products that drive engagement and revenue. They bridge the gap between user needs and business goals so that each product delivers a cohesive and satisfying experience.
A good designer doesn’t just focus on the visual design of the user interface; they also focus on functionality, improving user journeys, and driving business results. Hiring the right designer is key to innovating, responding to changing market conditions, and building sustainable businesses. Whether launching a new product or iterating on an existing one, having a solid digital product designer on hand is the key to long-term success.
With this guide, you’ll be able to hire product designers who can drive innovation and create designs that align with your company’s objectives.
