Interviews: The ‘take home’ task

Introduction

When I was interviewing I had a few companies give me a design task which I had to ‘take home’ to do. I’ll be honest I prefer these types of tasks as there is less pressure as you’re not being watched and you can take your time on them. However it can also be very time consuming especially when you have a full time job, and are interviewing for a number of places. At one time I had to do 3 tasks at the same time! It can be a huge amount of time to invest sometimes.

Here are some of the learnings I got from doing these task and reviewing tasks designers have sent for the job vacancies we have.

How much time should I spend on it.

So based on my experience, designers always spend more than the hiring manager recommends spending. This is typically because they want to give themselves the best chance of making a good impression.

I don’t think this is a bad thing, especially as a junior or mid weight designer, it will typically take you longer to do a task and highlight all your strengths.

When it comes to senior designer roles, this is an entirely different story as we then come into the argument where people say isn’t acceptable to ask for senior designers to do a task as they have a wealth of experience displayed in their portfolio.. but that is not a conversation for today.

The time you should take on the task really depends on the time you have available and are able to invest, as you have to remember this is work you’re doing which you won’t be paid for. I am also a believer that early on in your career you will have to be comfortable with doing work which you won’t be getting paid for like this. It’s a shame, but unfortunately it’s just the way the market is at the moment. At the end of the day this is your career, so you want to put in as much effort as possible especially if you have got to this stage.

I also think this is a good way to see if you really want the job, as if I don’t want a job, I wont be motivated to invest the time into doing the task.

I worked for a company who discussed paying senior designers for their time to do an interview task because designers were refusing to do them as they could be working and earning money in that time. However I don’t think this is going to happen for a while in our industry.

What app should I pick to redesign

Often the task is to take an existing app and make improvements. Sometimes companies give you the opportunity to select an app of your choice which is great. Do not pick Spotify,.. or Uber, Airbnb etc. These apps are so commonly used by everyone and they are so often picked for tasks that they’re so boring to read about. It also doesn’t look great that you’re picking a mainstream app, as a designer you should have experience using lots of interesting apps which you should showcase.

The app you pick is going to show a lot about you as a designer. I’m always quite disappointed when designers, especially senior designers pick Spotify! It happens a lot more often than you think.

Pick an app you really enjoy using and love! I find when people do pick an app they love, they put more effort into the redesign and there is a natural passion when they present it back, which is fantastic.

How long should I make the case study

This really depends on the task and the amount of time they’ve suggested you should spend on it. But once piece of advice I would give is not to make it too long, don’t think the longer it is, the better I will come across as that is not the case, you need to be able to show you can be concise with your work. One of the skills hiring managers want to see is how you can take your process and adapt it with this time constraint as that in itself is a skill. I have an application where a designer did 20 pages of text and images for a 20 hour task and it was frustrating because I had to spend a huge amount of time to go through it to ensure they had a fair chance. The designer didn’t get through.

However don’t be afraid to space your work out. Don’t feel like everything needs to fit on a few pages, use your space wisely. Put different tasks on different pages/slides. Let your content breathe. Sometimes I get applications where the review we ask for is all squashed onto one slide. Treat the case study as a presentation and consider how someone will look through it and the experience you want them to have.

Conclusion

One of the things you will pick up is how to create a structure for these tasks, so even if you have multiple, they follow a framework which you can duplicate so you’re not having to start from scratch each time.

Hopefully some of these ideas will help you when you are doing your case study for your next application. My aim is to create a workshop where I will go through how you should structure your case study to make it easier to complete these.