User experience researcher Interview Questions
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User Experience Researcher interview questions shared by candidates
If you can only ask one survey question, what question would you ask to evaluate how people feel about xx product's entire experience?
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Develop a 3-wk research plan based on a given scenario. What about 2 months?
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Suppose you come forward with a usability recommendation, and the engineers counter that with, “All the usage data we have from millions of people suggest that is not a problem.” How would you respond?
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There's a lot of angles to take here, and they depend on the unstated context. Either way, I would probably respond by stepping back and avoiding a p*ssing match. 1. You didn't properly triangulate your qual research with quant user data before making a product recommendation. You need to understand what the data collected really means, and whether it actually counters your UX research. Did you study a more narrow audience than is represented by the quant data? Did you identify a real product problem that your users are eager to verbalize, but which isn't visible in the product metrics? 2. Your partners just don't want to make the change, and pushing back on your research validity is a very common (but evasive) way of communicating that. The obvious cliche is that your engineers should have been involved in the research from the start. If there is an issue obvious enough to you as a researcher to make a recommendation, the engineers are going to see it as well given the same interactions. They may also realize shortcomings in the metrics they've chosen to track, that prevent them from seeing these issues in their data. Less
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Usage data even if big numbers does NOT indicate a great design. Simply put, think of how many times you had no option but to use a certain service although neither the design nor your experience was great! Less
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Generally, I will invite him to have a cup of coffee together and explain my opinion. My respond will depends on the unstated context. For example, I identify a real product problem from qualitative research, which is not visible in the product metrics. First, I will explain the usage data don’t always tell the truth. We must be careful that even something is really stupid, there will still be millions of people tolerating it because Google is very strong. Just imaging will you stop using Gmail if one function of it doesn’t work well? That’s what usability research does, to find the truth behind the data by quantitative and qualitative ways. And the product metrics we used is not comprehensive, which means that some problems may be invisible in the metrics. Then I would like to explain how I get the usability recommendation. I may bring my laptop or invite him to my desk to show him the data and graph of my research and explain the logic. Data and graph is always more convinced than words, right? And I am also glad to hear his comments or questions. Less
Someone on the team has a strong opinion about how a certain feature should be designed, but you disagree that it is a good user experience. How do you approach the situation?
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1. Probe to understand the other person’s mental model. What are the core, testable assumptions around which they believe a certain experience is correct? For example, do they believe that your customer base values or does , just because they value it themselves, or have anecdotal experiences via someone they know? 2. Create the context in which the other party feels comfortable with your introducing data that tests those hypotheses: - design patterns in similar existing user interfaces - prior research (if you work for a large company) or analytics - external research (market research, academic research, anything) 3. If you can’t get anywhere, do a bake-off on usertesting with representative participants. Make sure you’re not just asking for preference, but looking for the underlying, broader goals, values & beliefs that lead to those preferences. Less
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I was asked this very same question during my interview. I answered that: (1) obviously that person has thought about his/her position before taking that stance; (2) I assume that we all want to do a good job and improve the product; (3) start with common ground from that opinion and show how that opinion is somehow flawed - show a divergence; (4) be diplomatic.... I got the job but somehow I think this was not the right answer. Less
If you had two products and had to ask one question of users to determine which they preferred more, what would you ask?
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This feels like a somewhat academic question. I'm actually surprised to hear they asked it. 1. I’d need to know what the product is, and what kind of a construct we’re most concerned with: ease-of-use, learnability, satisfaction over time, etc. If it’s truly just generic user preference, I would literally just ask: “Do you have a preference for either of these products? Tell me what you think.” In real life as a user researcher, I would want to know why we are asking users which they prefer more in the first place. Often this request is just a code-phrase for “we have two competing UXs and can’t decide which to ship within our team, so let's let our customers decide for us”. In that case, your job as a researcher isn’t to just go ask customers for a preference statement — customers can't make the choice for you. So your job is to articulate the goals/values/needs/tasks of your audience (and what success looks like for your product). Then, if you can’t A/B test, you qualitatively evaluate your UXs against those goals/values/needs and decide which is best. Customer preference should be part of that decision — but it’s certainly not the sole determinant. Less
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My 2-cents: This seems like a question that's actually attempting to figure out if you spend too much time over-thinking and over-analyzing things. If you can only ask one question to see which of two products users prefer more, ask them this: "Which of these two products do you prefer?" You're not being asked to determine "why" they like one over the other (although this information can be helpful depending on the scope of the project as a whole. But seriously, don't over think this one! Less
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Answer: I would use Sauro and Dumas "Single Ease Question" (SEQ) - "Overall, this task was ... easy ... hard" (5-pt Likert scale). It has the psychometric qualities of a more robust questionnaire but is only one question. Less
How would you deal with a dataset that was too large to load into memory?
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Sampling (random, stratified, etc.) Or to use parallel, distributed algorithms
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What's the possible answer to this question?
Can you rate your statistical skills? HLM, ANOVA, Growth models, ethnography, interviews?
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Is this not meant to be a trick question given that interviews and ethnography are qualitative methods? Less
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There's a lot of elements to typically cover in these questions, clarifications, scoping, making sure you're answering the actual question the interviewer is looking for you to answer, etc. Could be worth doing a mock interview with one of the Prepfully Facebook User Experience Researcher experts... they've worked in the role so they clearly know how to get through the interview. prepfully.com/practice-interviews Less
Suppose that you are using eye tracking on a cross-eyed participant and the calibration cannot be successfully. What do you do?
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Get them to calibrate the eyes individually
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I would just let the participant depart with a gratuity, and move on to the next participant? What an odd question to ask -- eye-tracking is often a niche technology in lean user research. Even as a former team expert in eye-tracking (with published academic research on the topic), this is such an edge case I've never even heard of it. Less
Think about an app you like to use. Suppose the product manager tells you that he wants you to find the top 10 UX issues. How would you go about this?
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Think about a situation when you had trouble convincing someone to accept one of your usability recommendations. How did you overcome that? Less
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Issue-based Metrics: 1. in-person studies with a think aloud protocol or retrospective think-aloud technique. 2. Automated studies/ Remote Studies: collect performance metrics such as completion, time on task, efficiency, errors, learnability, as well as self-report scales along with access to verbatim comments (post-task or conditional). Less
Mostly case-study type of questions, quite open-ended
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I got a full list of all frequent Facebook questions asked so far in 2020 from candor.co/interviews and none of them were on Glassdoor. Check it out 💎 Less
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The key in these questions is to cover the fundamentals. There's usually a back-and-forth with the interviewer. Might be worth doing a mock interview with one of the Facebook User Experience Researcher experts on Prepfully? They give some real-world practice and guidance, which is pretty helpful. prepfully.com/practice-interviews Less
How would you design a research study
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Gave past examples from both work and school
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Hello, I am a FB employee and I have created an interview prep guide for Facebook interviews, based on my and my colleagues' recent interview experiences. The guide has questions you should expect along with our answers that got us into Facebook. You can find it here: interviewjoy.com/services/interview-process-details/facebook-manager-job-interview-questions-answers-more/ (please do not forget to also look at the reviews at the bottom of that page). Thanks and good luck! Less