A UX/UI Designer at Cardinal Health plays a pivotal role in shaping the digital landscape of modern healthcare. Cardinal Health is a global integrated healthcare services and products company, which means its digital ecosystem is vast, complex, and highly impactful. In this role, you will be responsible for designing intuitive, accessible, and highly functional digital products that support healthcare providers, pharmacists, manufacturers, and patients.

The products you work on directly influence clinical workflows, medical supply chain logistics, e-commerce platforms, and patient care systems. Designing for the healthcare space requires a deep understanding of complex data visualization, strict compliance standards, and diverse user personas who often operate in high-stress environments. Your work will bridge the gap between complex backend systems and seamless, user-friendly frontend interfaces.

This position offers a unique blend of enterprise-scale challenges and human-centered design opportunities. You will not just be designing aesthetically pleasing interfaces; you will be solving systemic usability challenges that improve operational efficiency and, ultimately, contribute to better patient outcomes. It is a highly collaborative role that requires close partnership with product management, engineering, and various business divisions across the enterprise.

To succeed in the Cardinal Health interview process, you must be prepared for a mix of behavioral, portfolio-focused, and collaborative questions. Interviewers want to understand your design methodology, how you handle constraints, and how you work within cross-functional teams. The questions below represent patterns identified from real candidate experiences at the company.

Portfolio & Design Methodology

These questions evaluate your end-to-end design process, your ability to articulate design decisions, and how you handle real-world project constraints.

• Walk us through a specific case study in your portfolio and explain your role in the project.
• How do you approach user research when you have limited time or budget?

Preparing for a UX/UI Designer interview at Cardinal Health requires a strategic approach that balances technical design craft with communication skills. You should treat your interview prep as a design project: understand your audience (the interviewers), define the value you bring, and present your journey clearly and concisely.

Cardinal Health looks for designers who are pragmatic, collaborative, and deeply empathetic to the end-user. You must demonstrate that you can navigate the complexities of enterprise healthcare systems without losing sight of user-centered design principles.

Portfolio Craft & Presentation – Your portfolio is the single most important asset in this process. Interviewers will evaluate how you structure your case studies, the clarity of your visual communication, and your ability to explain the "why" behind your design decisions. Be ready to discuss your iterations, failures, and what you learned from them.

Problem-Solving & User Focus – You must show a structured approach to solving user problems. This includes how you gather requirements, conduct research, synthesize data, and translate insights into functional design solutions.

Cross-Functional Collaboration – Since you will work closely with developers, product owners, and business analysts, you need to show that you understand their perspectives. Demonstrate your experience with developer handoffs, design systems, and alignment on product scope.

Adaptability & Ambiguity – Enterprise environments often come with shifting priorities and complex, legacy architectures. Interviewers want to see that you can remain resilient, ask the right questions, and design iteratively within these constraints.

The interview process for a UX/UI Designer at Cardinal Health typically spans three to four stages. Candidates generally describe the process as structured and average in difficulty, with a strong focus on portfolio reviews and collaborative discussions. The overall timeline can vary, with some stages moving very quickly, while feedback between later rounds can sometimes take a few weeks.

The journey begins with a standard recruiter phone screen to align on your background, salary expectations, and basic role requirements. This is followed by a virtual interview with the hiring manager or design director, where you will discuss your experience at a high level and walk through portions of your portfolio.

The final stages consist of deep-dive panel interviews. You will present your portfolio or a specific case study to a panel that often includes design team members, product managers, and engineering partners. These rounds are highly conversational, allowing you to meet a significant portion of the team and get a strong feel for the company's culture and working style.

The timeline above outlines the standard progression from your initial application to the final offer stage. Use this visual guide to pace your preparation, ensuring you have your portfolio polished and your case studies rehearsed well before reaching the panel interview stages.

To stand out in the Cardinal Health interview process, you must understand exactly what your interviewers are looking for during each evaluation stage.

Portfolio Walkthrough & Case Study

The portfolio walkthrough is your opportunity to showcase your craft, your design thinking, and your end-to-end design process. Interviewers want to see how you move from an initial problem statement to a polished, high-fidelity solution.

Be ready to go over:

• Problem Definition – How you identified the user pain points and defined the project goals.
• User Research & Synthesis – The methodologies you used to understand your users and how you translated those insights into design requirements.
• Iterative Design & Testing – Showing your wireframes, low-fidelity sketches, usability testing feedback, and how those inputs shaped the final UI.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Designing for accessibility (WCAG compliance) in healthcare, handling highly complex data grids, and designing for legacy system modernization.

Example scenarios:

• "Walk us through a project where your initial design assumptions were proven wrong by user testing, and explain how you pivoted."
• "Show us an example of how you structured a complex workflow to make it simpler and more intuitive for an enterprise user."

Cross-Functional Collaboration & Engineering Alignment

Designing at Cardinal Health requires a strong partnership with engineering to ensure your designs are feasible and successfully implemented.

Be ready to go over:

• Developer Handoff – How you document your designs, specify redlines, and communicate interactions to developers.
• Design Systems – Your experience using, contributing to, or building scalable design systems to maintain consistency.
• Conflict Resolution – How you handle situations where engineering constraints require you to compromise on your ideal UX design.

Example scenarios:

• "Describe a time when a developer told you a design was too difficult to build within the sprint. How did you negotiate a solution?"
• "How do you ensure consistency in your designs when working across different product divisions?"

Multi-Divisional Panel Presentations

In the final rounds, you may present to stakeholders from different divisions of the team you are interviewing for. They will evaluate your communication skills and how you present your design value to non-designers.

Be ready to go over:

• Stakeholder Management – Translating design decisions into business value (e.g., how a design improvement reduces support tickets or increases task completion rates).
• Presentation Skills – Keeping a diverse audience engaged and structuring your presentation logically.
• Receiving Feedback – Handling live critique and questions from multiple disciplines with professionalism and curiosity.

Example scenarios:

• "How do you explain the value of user research to a business stakeholder who wants to skip straight to high-fidelity UI?"
• "Describe how you handled conflicting feedback from two different stakeholders on the same design."