Best interview questions for UX Researchers

UX Researcher Interview Questions

A UX or user Researchers responsibility is to study target audiences and collect and analyse data that is relevant to the product. They will draw conclusions from their analysis to suggest improvements or changes to either the design or product teams.

UX Researchers work closely with many different stakeholders inside the company, mainly product, design and customer success, as well as conducting external interviews with users and target groups.

Some skills that will be particularly valuable to look out for when interviewing are:

UX Researchers need to have outstanding communication skills as their role is all about communicating in many different ways. It could be explaining a feature, interviewing, or presenting data in simple ways.
A good candidate will have a great understanding of product, UX/UI, design and copywriting or content creation.

Interviewing a UX Researcher

Are you searching for an excellent UX Researcher? Then it will soon be time to get to know the candidates a little better in an interview. With our UX Researcher interview questions, your interview is prepared quickly and easily.

Please note: Our interview questions are suggestions for the earlier stages of the application process and for candidates with average work experience. They are therefore a little more general.

How to open a job interview

Interviews naturally breed nerves, so the first part of your interview should aim to make the candidate feel comfortable speaking with you, you’ll get much more information out of them and a better sense of the person they are if they feel like they can trust the environment they are in.

To do this you can ask some fun and interesting questions linked to the role, they should be open-ended and encourage conversation.

Job Description available

See our UX Researcher Job Description here

For the interview

A positive opener to start

What has been your journey so far?

Why did you decide to go into UX Research?

Behavioral Questions

How would you improve on our current product?
This will show the level of research the candidate has done on your company as well as their knowledge of the industry overall. They should compare products to yours that they like and be able to draw positives from them that would work for your particular product.
What is your favourite part of user research?
This gives the candidate an opportunity to showcase their skill set and talk about what they are most passionate about in the role.
What are some projects you’ve worked on in the past that have made you feel particularly accomplished? Why?
This is again a question about personality, to get a feel for whether the person would be a good fit within the company. It will also give you a good scope of their current experience and their seniority level.

Soft Skills

How would you communicate about a topic you’re researching to a large group of people that have little experience in the area?
Communication skills are vitally important for a UX Researcher as they will be talking to users and potential customers, as well as stakeholders a lot. They should be confident in their communication ability and know how to change their tone to suit an audience.
What has been one of the most difficult challenges you’ve had as a researcher?
This should display how they react under pressure and how good at problem solving they are.

Hard Skills

What is the research process that you usually follow?
Here you should watch out for how they would involve other stakeholders or teams in the process, what methods and techniques they are familiar with, and how that would fit into your existing company culture and work ethics.
How would you conduct user interviews if you were trying to test a particular interaction?
There are many different ways to test an interaction on an app or website. Your candidate should be able to talk about a few and what has worked for them in the past.
What is your process when working with designers or product owners?
There is a lot of collaboration work in the UX researcher role. A good candidate will be able to present relevant findings and conclusions to different stakeholders.
What general questions do you usually ask at the beginning of a project?
This question is to highlight their experience in the end-to-end process of research. A good candidate will need to understand the scope of the project and why it would be important to the company to implement as well as things like target audience and goals.

Operational / Situational Questions

How would you design a study for [insert company persona or product here]
Look for answers that deal with how they would create a plan and estimate a timeline, what type of research they would choose and why, and what research they would pick for each stage.
How would you start research for a project that is brand new?
Researching for already existing products or features is much different to researching something starting from scratch. Take note of how they would make that difference like identifying particular audiences.
The product team needs to know if their feature is working for users. How do you conduct that research and how can you tell if it’s working or not?
Another question to understand the scope of the candidates experience level and how they can analyse data to come to conclusions, to then suggest changes.