UI/UX Designer

Ryan Mahoney

Ryan Mahoney

Director of Product, FirstWho

“At this level, you want someone who can take a feature from start to finish without you hovering, but still knows when to bring others in and actually hear what they say. The tricky part is finding a designer who can turn a messy product requirement into a clean interface, run their own research to check it, and hand it off to engineers who won't regret working with them. Most candidates manage two out of three. Some talk a great game about process but shut down when stakeholders push back. Others ship quickly but treat accessibility as something to deal with later, or don't know WCAG 2.2 well enough to catch real problems themselves. You need someone who communicates clearly not because they're naturally charming, but because they've learned that vague design wastes everyone's time. The real find is the designer who will stand up for a user need, accept when they lose, and still ship something that makes sense instead of sulking or quietly undermining the outcome.”

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Competency Questions

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Design Systems, Operations & Compliance

Addresses scalable component creation, design-to-code fidelity, operational efficiency, and team contribution. At the mid-level, emphasizes extending design systems, ensuring smooth engineering handoff, and mentoring junior designers while maintaining quality standards.

Design Leadership

Mentors junior designers; leads small projects and contributes to team processes and design culture.

Interview round: Peer Design Collaboration

Describe a situation where you elevated the design practice or quality of those around you without formal authority.

Positive indicators

  • Describes concrete artifacts, sessions, or processes created
  • Shows generosity with knowledge and credit to others
  • Mentions adapting approach based on colleague feedback
  • Frames as collective improvement, not personal elevation

Negative indicators

  • Improvement imposed without colleague input or buy-in
  • Focus on being recognized as expert rather than elevating others
  • No consideration of different learning styles or needs
  • Abandons effort when not immediately adopted

Attitude Questions

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Active Listening

The disciplined practice of fully concentrating on, comprehending, and responding to spoken and unspoken communication from others—demonstrated through deliberate attention management, accurate paraphrasing, inquiry into underlying meaning, and suspension of premature judgment or solution-generation. In design contexts, this involves attending to technical constraints, emotional subtext, power dynamics, and implicit needs that may contradict explicit statements.

Interview round: Recruiter Screen

Describe a situation where you needed to understand and design for requirements from legal, compliance, or security that initially seemed to block your intended approach.

Positive indicators

  • Quotes specific regulatory concern or standard
  • Describes consulting compliance expert early
  • Mentions finding alternative that satisfied both needs
  • References educating compliance on user impact

Negative indicators

  • Treated requirement as arbitrary obstacle
  • Designed around requirement without compliance awareness
  • Accepted poor user experience as inevitable
  • No exploration of alternative approaches

Progression Framework

This table shows how competencies evolve across experience levels. Each cell shows competency at that level.

Design Systems, Operations & Compliance

5 competencies

CompetencyJuniorMidSeniorPrincipal
Design Leadership

Receives feedback actively and pursues skill development opportunities.

Mentors junior designers; leads small projects and contributes to team processes and design culture.

Leads design teams; manages hiring, performance, and career development.

Leads design departments; shapes organizational structure, culture, and strategic design investments.

Design Systems Architecture

Uses design system components correctly and reports inconsistencies or bugs.

Creates new components and patterns; maintains documentation and usage guidelines while ensuring accessibility and cross-platform coherence.

Architects design system structure; establishes governance models and drives adoption across teams.

Evolves multi-brand/multi-platform systems; defines industry standards for design tokens and system architecture.

Implementation & Handoff

Prepares redlines and basic design specifications for engineering handoff.

Manages detailed handoff process; supports QA and maintains design tokens to ensure implementation fidelity.

Optimizes design-dev collaboration; establishes handoff workflows and implementation standards.

Defines DesignOps strategy; builds tooling infrastructure and CI/CD pipelines for design assets.

Operational Tool Design

Designs simple internal forms and interfaces based on requirements.

Optimizes internal workflows; designs admin tools and dashboards for operations teams and customer support efficiency.

Architects complex operational systems; measures efficiency gains and drives automation strategies.

Transforms enterprise operations; defines internal product strategy and organizational workflow architecture.

Regulatory Compliance & Privacy

Applies standard privacy patterns such as consent banners and data request flows.

Designs comprehensive privacy experiences including GDPR/CCPA compliance flows and data deletion workflows.

Develops compliance strategies; implements privacy-by-design frameworks and conducts risk assessments.

Navigates global regulatory strategy; influences policy and establishes ethical data practices.

Interface Design & Content Strategy

5 competencies

CompetencyJuniorMidSeniorPrincipal
Accessibility Standards

Applies WCAG 2.1 guidelines to designs; uses automated accessibility checkers and keyboard navigation.

Conducts accessibility audits; designs inclusive alternatives for complex interactions and visualizations, ensuring WCAG 2.1 AA compliance across platforms.

Sets organizational accessibility standards; trains teams and leads remediation of complex compliance gaps.

Drives organizational accessibility strategy; influences legal compliance and industry inclusive design practices.

Content Strategy

Writes clear, concise UI copy and applies established voice and tone guidelines to interface elements.

Develops content models and conducts audits; optimizes content for usability, SEO, and conversion while maintaining voice and tone consistency across features.

Defines content strategy frameworks; aligns content with brand architecture and scales across product lines.

Architects enterprise content ecosystems; influences organizational brand voice and content governance policies.

Cross-Platform Adaptation

Adapts designs for standard responsive breakpoints; understands platform-specific conventions.

Designs platform-optimized experiences (iOS vs Android vs Web) while maintaining design system coherence and responsive behavior across breakpoints.

Defines cross-platform strategy; optimizes for device capabilities and context-of-use across ecosystems.

Architects multi-ecosystem experiences; pioneers design for novel form factors (automotive, wearables, spatial).

Data Visualization

Creates basic charts and graphs using established design system components and libraries.

Designs complex dashboards; selects appropriate visualization types for diverse data relationships and accessibility requirements.

Defines data visualization systems; handles real-time data, complex filtering, and accessibility for data interfaces.

Innovates in data storytelling and interactive visualization; sets enterprise analytics UX strategy.

Interaction Design

Executes wireframes and prototypes for defined features using established design patterns and component libraries.

Independently designs end-to-end user flows; introduces novel interaction patterns for complex scenarios while ensuring state management and edge case handling.

Defines interaction frameworks and state management logic; solves ambiguous interaction problems and mentors on craft excellence.

Sets interaction strategy for product portfolios; pioneers paradigm-shifting patterns and contributes to industry standards.

Research, Analytics & Strategic UX

5 competencies

CompetencyJuniorMidSeniorPrincipal
AI/ML Interface Patterns

Implements standard AI UI patterns such as chatbots, recommendation carousels, and suggestion chips.

Designs human-in-the-loop interactions; handles AI error states, confidence indicators, and feedback mechanisms for ML-powered features.

Defines AI UX frameworks; balances automation with user control; establishes ethical guidelines for AI interfaces.

Shapes organizational AI UX strategy; defines novel interaction paradigms for generative and agentic systems.

Business Strategy Alignment

Understands user stories and requirements within given business constraints.

Balances user needs with business constraints; articulates design value in business terms and aligns solutions with monetization and growth goals.

Influences product roadmap through UX insights; positions UX as a business differentiator.

Partners with C-suite on strategy; drives UX-led business model innovation and market expansion.

Experimentation & Data Analysis

Sets up basic A/B tests; monitors standard metrics like click-through and conversion rates.

Designs experiments and interprets statistical significance; balances quantitative data with qualitative insights to iterate on features.

Defines experimentation strategy; designs complex multivariate tests and establishes north star metrics.

Institutionalizes experimentation culture; creates growth frameworks and advanced statistical models for UX.

Strategic UX Vision

Participates in design critiques and understands product vision.

Owns feature-level vision; aligns stakeholders and drives consensus on design direction for end-to-end user flows.

Defines product vision and 3-year roadmap; drives cross-portfolio strategy and platform thinking.

Shapes industry vision; leads organizational transformation and establishes thought leadership.

User Research Methodologies

Assists with usability tests and interviews; takes notes and organizes raw data.

Independently conducts interviews, surveys, and usability tests; synthesizes findings into actionable insights that drive product decisions.

Leads strategic research initiatives using mixed methods; creates journey maps and service blueprints.

Establishes organizational research strategy; builds insight repositories and longitudinal research programs.