Expect a mix of portfolio walkthroughs, scenario prompts, and deep dives into how you make decisions under constraints. Prepare concise, structured answers that emphasize the problem, your approach, the evidence you gathered, decisions you made, and the impact.

Human Factors & Clinical UX

These questions assess your ability to design for safety, learnability, and clinical realities.

• How would you identify and prioritize critical tasks for a new ICU device interface?
• Describe a study you ran (or would run) to validate mitigation of a high-severity use error.
• Tell us about a time a clinician’s feedback changed your design direction. What changed and why?
• How do you document use-related risks and trace them to UI requirements?
• What’s your approach to alarm hierarchy and acknowledgment to reduce alarm fatigue?

Interaction & Visual Design

We will probe your craft, patterns, and documentation quality.

• Walk us through the most complex component you’ve designed in Figma and how you handed it off.
• How do you ensure sufficient contrast and focus order in dark environments like the OR?
• Show how you visualize dense clinical data without overwhelming the user.
• How do you express error, warning, and safe states in specs for engineers?
• Redesign this input control to minimize mis-entry. Explain patterns and validation.

Product Strategy & Collaboration

We want to see prioritization, stakeholder alignment, and trade-off decisions.

• Describe a difficult trade-off between safety and speed. How did you reach agreement?
• How do you define success metrics for onboarding a new clinical workflow?
• Give an example of pushback you offered to protect usability. What evidence did you use?
• How do you integrate Engineering constraints early to avoid rework?
• Tell us about driving a cross-team design decision across multiple products.

Research & Testing Cases

These assess your approach to evidence and iteration.

• Outline a formative test plan for a new device setup flow. What are your success criteria?
• How do you select fidelity for prototyping at each research stage?
• Share a time your test invalidated a favored approach. How did you respond?
• What are your methods for remote vs. in-situ testing in clinical contexts?
• How do you turn qualitative insights into testable requirements?

Execution Under Design Controls

We’ll explore your operational rigor and documentation discipline.

• Which artifacts do you contribute to the DHF and when?
• How do you maintain traceability from user needs to UI requirements and tests?
• What is your process for change control when a late usability issue emerges?
• How do you collaborate with QA/RA during summative readiness?
• Walk us through how you ensure developers implement the intended behavior.

This visual outlines the typical sequence—early conversations, portfolio review, design exercise and critique, multi-disciplinary interviews, and final calibration. Use it to plan your preparation cadence: reserve time for a polished portfolio walkthrough and a structured design challenge, and prepare concise narratives for cross-functional panels who will probe collaboration, risk management, and decision-making depth.

Deep Dive into Evaluation Areas

Human-Centered Design in Regulated Healthcare

This area evaluates whether you can turn clinical realities into safe, intuitive experiences. Expect to discuss how you elicit user needs with clinicians, translate them into requirements, and align solutions to risk controls and design controls.

• Be ready to go over:

  • Formative vs. summative usability testing: When to use each, study design basics, success criteria, and how findings change requirements.
  • Use-related risk analysis (URRA): Identifying critical tasks, hazards, mitigations, and linking to UI decisions.
  • Task analysis and workflow mapping: Capturing multi-actor workflows (e.g., surgeon, scrub tech, circulating nurse) and edge cases.
  • Advanced concepts (less common): IEC 62366-1 usability engineering, ISO 14971 risk management, IEC 60601-1-8 alarm principles, labeling/HFE documentation for regulatory submissions.

• Example questions or scenarios:

  • "Walk us through a time you identified a critical-use error and redesigned to mitigate it—how did you validate the fix?"
  • "How would you design and test an alarm acknowledgment workflow in an ICU monitor to minimize alarm fatigue?"
  • "Given conflicting input from a clinician and an engineer, how do you resolve a safety vs. speed trade-off?"

Interaction & Visual Design (Figma, Design Systems, Accessibility)

You will be assessed on your ability to ship clear, consistent, accessible interfaces at scale. Show how you build and evolve design systems, express states, and deliver unambiguous specs for engineers.

• Be ready to go over:

  • Figma proficiency: Components, variants, autolayout, tokens, handoff workflows.
  • Accessibility: WCAG 2.1 AA color, focus order, contrast in low-light OR environments, iconography for critical states.
  • Information density: Prioritizing data on small screens or high-stakes dashboards.
  • Advanced concepts (less common): Motion for status comprehension, complex tables and trends in critical care, dark mode in clinical settings, hardware/software constraints on embedded UIs.

• Example questions or scenarios:

  • "Redesign an infusion rate control to reduce mis-entry. What patterns and safeguards would you use?"
  • "Show us how you document interaction states for error, warning, and safe conditions."
  • "How do you adapt a component from mobile to an embedded device with hardware buttons?"

Product Thinking & Cross-Functional Collaboration

Success depends on aligning user value, clinical evidence, and technical feasibility. Interviewers will listen for structured prioritization, stakeholder management, and clear problem framing.

• Be ready to go over:

  • Hypothesis-driven design: Linking insights to measurable outcomes.
  • Trade-offs: Speed vs. safety, complexity vs. learnability, release scope vs. validation.
  • Partnering with R&D and Clinical: Integrating constraints early and negotiating acceptance criteria.
  • Advanced concepts (less common): Post-market surveillance inputs to roadmap; translating complaint trends into design backlog.

• Example questions or scenarios:

  • "Describe a time you pushed back on a feature to protect usability or safety. How did you build alignment?"
  • "How do you decide MVP scope for a feature that touches a critical task?"
  • "What metrics would you define for onboarding success in a new OR console?"

Prototyping, Testing, and Evidence

We look for designers who test the right thing at the right fidelity and document evidence that drives decisions.

• Be ready to go over:

  • Prototyping spectrum: Paper to high-fidelity, and when to use each in clinical contexts.
  • Study protocols: Recruiting, consent basics, defining critical tasks, success thresholds.
  • Analysis and reporting: Turning observations into requirements, risk mitigations, and backlog changes.
  • Advanced concepts (less common): IRB considerations, remote vs. in-situ testing, summative traceability to risk controls.

• Example questions or scenarios:

  • "How would you structure a formative study for a new alarm workflow on a cardiac assist device?"
  • "Walk us through a prototype that failed. What did you learn and what changed?"
  • "Show how you turned test findings into actionable updates to a design system."

Execution Under Design Controls

Delivering in MedTech means pairing design excellence with process rigor. We assess how you create artifacts that satisfy 21 CFR 820, internal SOPs, and partner expectations.

• Be ready to go over:

  • Design history file (DHF) contributions: User needs, UI requirements, traceability, verification/validation evidence.
  • Handoff quality: Specs, behaviors, states, accessibility and localization notes, acceptance criteria.
  • Change control: Managing revisions, documenting rationale, and coordinating with QA/RA.
  • Advanced concepts (less common): Software lifecycle touchpoints (IEC 62304), cybersecurity considerations for UI, labeling and IFU alignment.

• Example questions or scenarios:

  • "Which artifacts do you produce for a summative-ready design, and how are they consumed by QA/RA?"
  • "Describe your process to ensure the UI spec remains the single source of truth through development."
  • "How do you trace a usability risk to a specific UI requirement and test case?"