While the exact questions will vary based on your interviewers and the specific product team you are interviewing for, understanding the patterns will help you prepare effectively. The questions below reflect the core themes evaluated during the Duke Energy process.

Portfolio and Past Experience

These questions test your ability to articulate your past impact and explain your design rationale clearly.

• Walk me through a project in your portfolio that you are most proud of. What was your specific role?
• Tell me about a time a project did not go as planned. What did you learn from the experience?
• How do you balance business goals with user needs when they are in conflict?
• Explain a time when you had to design for a highly technical or complex user base.

Design Process and Whiteboarding

These prompts evaluate your real-time problem-solving skills and how you structure your thoughts under pressure.

• Design an ATM interface specifically for kids. (A known historical prompt for this role).
• How would you approach redesigning a legacy internal tool that employees complain is too hard to use?
• Walk me through your process for conducting user research when you have a very limited budget and timeline.
• What metrics do you look at to determine if a design change was successful?

Behavioral and Stakeholder Management

These questions assess your cultural fit, adaptability, and ability to navigate a large enterprise environment.

• Tell me about a time you had to explain a complex UX concept to a stakeholder who had no design background.
• Describe a situation where you received harsh or unconstructive feedback on your designs. How did you handle it?
• How do you manage your time and prioritize tasks when assigned to multiple projects simultaneously?
• Tell me about a time you had to compromise on a design due to technical constraints.

Deep Dive into Evaluation Areas

To succeed in your interviews, you need to understand exactly what the hiring team is looking for across several core competencies. Below is a breakdown of the primary evaluation areas.

Interaction Design and Prototyping

Your core craft is the foundation of your candidacy. Interviewers need to know that you can translate complex business requirements into intuitive, accessible user interfaces. Strong performance here means showcasing a portfolio where the final high-fidelity designs are directly linked to clear user flows, wireframes, and research insights.

Be ready to go over:

• Information Architecture – How you organize complex data, which is especially important for utility dashboards and billing portals.
• Micro-interactions and Feedback – How your designs communicate system status to the user (e.g., during an outage report).
• Accessibility (WCAG) – Ensuring your designs are usable by a diverse customer base, a critical requirement in the utility sector.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Multi-platform design systems, responsive grid behaviors for data-heavy enterprise tools, and designing for legacy system constraints.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Walk me through a project in your portfolio where you had to simplify a highly complex workflow for the end user."
• "How do you ensure your designs meet accessibility standards before handing them off to engineering?"
• "Explain your process for building and maintaining components within a larger design system."

Design Thinking and Live Problem Solving

Duke Energy places a strong emphasis on how you think on your feet. The final rounds often feature a live UX/UI user problem exercise. You are evaluated not on achieving a "perfect" final screen, but on your framework for discovery: who are the users, what are their constraints, and what is the core problem?

Be ready to go over:

• Framework Application – Using a structured approach (like the Double Diamond) to tackle an abstract prompt.
• Assumption Testing – Identifying what you don't know and stating the assumptions you are making to move forward.
• Collaborative Ideation – Navigating group dynamics if the exercise involves other candidates or cross-functional team members.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Rapid prototyping in Figma during a live call, or facilitating a mini-workshop on the spot.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Design an ATM interface specifically for kids."
• "Sketch a dashboard for a field technician who needs to locate a downed power line while wearing heavy gloves."
• "How would you prioritize features for a new mobile app if you only had two weeks to launch an MVP?"

Cross-Functional Collaboration and Leadership

Because you will be working in an enterprise environment—sometimes with stakeholders who are not well-versed in UX—your soft skills are heavily scrutinized. The team wants to see that you can lead the design conversation, push back gracefully when necessary, and build consensus.

Be ready to go over:

• Stakeholder Education – How you explain the value of user research or iterative design to a skeptical business leader.
• Handling Feedback – Your process for receiving, filtering, and implementing design critiques from non-designers.
• Engineering Handoff – How you collaborate with developers to ensure your designs are implemented accurately.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Leading design sprints, mentoring junior designers, or establishing UX metrics (like SUS or NPS) for a product.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Tell me about a time you disagreed with a product manager about a feature. How did you resolve it?"
• "How do you approach a situation where a manager or stakeholder does not understand the UX work you are doing?"
• "Describe your ideal workflow for handing off high-fidelity designs to an engineering team."