Intermediate interview questions in Design & UX, page 5
ARIA roles and keyboard nav for a Tabs component
Tablist, tab, tabpanel roles with aria-selected and aria-controls; arrow keys move tabs, Tab moves to the panel via roving tabindex.
How do you enforce WCAG touch target minimums in Figma?
Tests WCAG 2.2 SC 2.5.8 and design-system governance. A strong answer cites the 24x24 CSS pixel minimum and spacing exception, then covers Figma component constraints and linting. A red flag is dumping accessibility on developers without design guardrails.
Enforcing an accessible name on icon-only buttons
Require aria-label via the type system for icon-only variants, warn at runtime, decorate the icon as aria-hidden.
How would you model user events to analyze cancellation paths?
Timestamped events with user and session IDs, separate entity snapshots, and time-range partitioning.
How do you indicate sort state accessibly in a data table?
Use shape-differentiated icons, annotate aria-sort on the active header, and maximize the button click target.
Accessible toasts with ARIA live regions
A persistent live region, polite vs assertive by urgency, role status or alert, content injected after mount.
How would you design an experiment measuring API latency impact on retention?
Randomize users into control and delay groups; track D7 retention and P99 latency; analyze with quantile metrics.
How would you design an auto-generated sitemap.xml for a large blog?
This tests scalable SEO automation. A strong answer proposes an async pipeline, sitemap index files past 50,000 URLs, and loc, lastmod, and priority. Red flag: manual edits, static files in git, or ignoring the 50,000 URL limit.
Outline a strategy to improve LCP and CLS for blog article pages
Fix LCP with server speed, resource hints, critical CSS; fix CLS with explicit sizes and font-display.
Translate Figma Auto Layout padding, direction, and spacing to Flexbox
Tests your ability to bridge design tools and CSS layout mechanics. Match direction to flex-direction, padding to gap or container padding, space-between to justify-content, and hug/fill to flex-grow or flex-shrink.
Design a system to A/B test headlines for a single article URL
Hash users for sticky variants; store separately; emit events; compute CTR.
How would you map Figma Variables to CSS Custom Properties for tokens?
This tests bridging Figma variable collections and modes into maintainable CSS. A strong answer maps collections to semantic CSS custom properties, supports mode switching via data attributes, and mirrors design system naming.
How would you architect a related articles feature?
Start with tag overlap for speed; move to embeddings with ANN for semantics; compare latency, cost, and coverage.
How do you synthesize low-level codes into high-level themes?
Tests systematic thematic analysis. Strong answers cover tagging observations with codes, grouping related findings into themes that emerge across participants, and choosing methods like affinity diagramming based on context.
How do Figma variants influence component code structure?
Tests design-to-code translation and component API modeling. Map variant properties to semantic props like size and type; handle interactive states internally via CSS. Prioritize property names over pixel values.
Designing a contribution model with quality gates
Define a federated model, branch-and-PR flow, required reviews, and automated gates for tests, a11y, and visual regression.
What is your process for reconciling significant coding differences?
This tests intercoder reliability and systematic reconciliation. Quantify divergence via agreement metrics; convene to refine codebook definitions and edge-case rules; re-code a sample to verify alignment. Red flag: treating coding as pure subjective opinion.
How do you identify responsive breakpoints in Figma for CSS?
Tests if you derive CSS logic from Figma structure, not pixels. A strong answer checks auto layout direction changes, wrap toggles, and resizing rules to find behavior shifts, then maps those widths to queries.
Building a design system quarterly roadmap
Combine usage and adoption data, support tickets, stakeholder interviews, and a debt ledger into a scored backlog with a deliberate debt allocation.
How do you determine when you've reached thematic saturation?
This tests operationalizing saturation beyond gut feel. A strong answer cites Guest et al.'s Base Size, Run Length, and New Information Threshold, and flags consecutive interviews adding no new high-level themes.
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