Have you ever got stuck on how to proceed with a whiteboarding design challenge? About to do your first whiteboarding challenge and don’t know where to start? Then you’re in the right place. Here are some useful tips that I do when starting a whiteboarding design challenge.
Never start off a whiteboarding challenge by drawing your solution. Hiring managers/Designers want to know that you understand the challenge and ask clarifying questions before even putting anything on the board.
Ask if they (the host) is willing to participate in the challenge by either being the user or the business owner so you can ask clarifying questions. Proceed with the next few steps by thinking aloud (even if they say no, you can still do the following steps by thinking aloud but you just won’t have anyone to clarify any questions you might have):
1. Writing down the Challenge
It’s a good place to start and will make sure that you remember the prompt. You will come back to this by the end of the design to make sure you fulfilled what they were asking of you.
2. Who are the Users?
Write down who the users are. Whether they are the primary, secondary, tertiary. Know who you are solving this problem for. Think aloud and talk through your reasoning for selecting xyz as your primary/secondary/etc. Ask to clarify if the users you had in mind match the user base the host has in mind. If they had a difference in opinion, ask for their reasoning behind their choices. Don’t flat out reject their thoughts because they don’t coincide with yours. This is a team effort and they want to know that you’re willing to take in other people’s input.
3. What are their Needs?
Based on the prompt, you can start off with writing down what the user’s needs will be. You will come back to this so don’t worry if you can only think of one or two off the top of your head right now. Once you finish thinking aloud and writing them down and checking with the host that you are on the same page, move on to the next step.
4. What are your Assumptions?
Here, you will write down assumptions you made based off of the prompt, userbase, their needs, and your own experience in that field. Talk through your assumptions as you write them down and this might lead you onto a different path than the prompt. That is okay. The prompt is there just to get you started. You can challenge the prompt. You can talk it through with your host that you are deciding to move down this path because based on your own experience, you know x is a better option than y even though the host is asking for y. After you made your case, you can ask if the host agrees with your decision and if it is alright to continue the challenge going down this path. You will then need to go back to your Needs section and fill out some more information based on your new assumptions.
5. What are the Steps?
Here, you will write down the steps it takes for your user to complete the prompt. For example, if the prompt was to complete a checkout process… the steps could be:
- User browses the catalog on the home screen.
- User adds items to cart.
- User proceeds to cart to checkout.
- User selects checkout.
- User fills out credit card information and billing address.
- User receives confirmation of successful purchase and returns to home.
You are thinking of what the user flow will be like when you are writing down these steps. It does not have to be as clear as the sample above, but it should be clear enough that the host will know what kind of path you will be taking in your sketches. You can even forego the ‘User’ part and just write down the action to save some time.
6. What is your Goal?
Based on what you did above, your goal might now be slightly different from the prompt. Write down your goal on what you plan on achieving by the end of this challenge. This is similar to your Problem Statement if you’re coming from a design bootcamp.
7. Begin your Sketches
By now, you will probably be well over half or 3/4’s of your allotted time for this challenge which is okay. The sketches are, after all, just sketches. They do not have to be super detailed or clean. By now, the host will have a good idea of what you planning on creating from how you talked them through your whole process above. Think aloud as draw your sketches to make sure they understand your thought process. You will probably be asked to go through the whole whiteboarding process and you can easily do that as you have everything written out. Go over it on a high-level basis as you won’t need to go that in-depth anymore since you did so earlier when you talked through your reasoning for doing xyz. After you go through your sketches, make sure to do the following next:
8. End with Alternatives/Improvements
You will want to make sure you can provide things that you could have done better to improve the overall design. Alternative actions that you could have done to better narrow down x or to improve y. They want to know that your final design is not all you had in mind and that you are always thinking about room for improvement. Finally, ask if they have any more questions for you and your design.
I hope this helps, and best of luck on any whiteboarding challenges you will face in the future. Thanks for reading!
