At OsborneKlein, a private wealth advisory practice of Ameriprise, the UX/UI Designer role is a critical link between complex financial advisory strategies and intuitive digital experiences. This position is not just about making interfaces look visually polished; it is about establishing trust, clarity, and ease of use for clients navigating high-stakes financial decisions. You will work on digital products that enable financial advisors to manage portfolios efficiently and help clients visualize their long-term financial goals with confidence.

The digital ecosystem at Ameriprise is highly sophisticated, serving a diverse user base that includes high-net-worth clients, dedicated financial advisors, and internal operations teams. As a UX/UI Designer, you will tackle challenges related to massive data density, strict regulatory compliance, and multi-step user workflows. Your design decisions will directly impact client satisfaction, advisor productivity, and the overall modern digital presence of the practice.

This role offers an exciting opportunity to solve deep interaction design challenges within the wealth management space. You will work in a collaborative environment where design is recognized as a strategic differentiator. To succeed, you must balance user-centric design principles with complex business logic, transforming intricate wealth management processes into seamless, elegant digital paths.

To help you prepare, we have categorized common interview questions based on real candidate experiences at Ameriprise. These questions are designed to evaluate your design process, technical expertise, and ability to collaborate across multidisciplinary teams.

Portfolio & Design Process

These questions assess how you approach design challenges from discovery to execution. Interviewers want to see how you define user problems, iterate on feedback, and measure success.

• Walk us through a portfolio project that you are particularly proud of. What was your specific role, and how did you measure its success?
• How do you handle a situation where user research insights directly contradict the business requirements or stakeholder assumptions?

Preparing for the UX/UI Designer interview loop at OsborneKlein / Ameriprise requires a strategic approach. You must be ready to demonstrate not only your visual design craft but also your logical problem-solving abilities and communication style.

Portfolio Storytelling – Do not just show the final high-fidelity screens. Interviewers want to see your end-to-end design process, including early sketches, wireframes, user testing insights, and how you iterated based on feedback.

Complex Problem-Solving – Be prepared to demonstrate how you simplify complex user journeys. In financial services, you must show that you can organize dense data and multi-step workflows into logical, digestible layouts.

Cross-functional Collaboration – You will work closely with product management, engineering, compliance, and business stakeholders. Highlight your ability to speak their languages, negotiate constraints, and build consensus.

Culture & Values Alignment – Ameriprise values trust, integrity, and client-first thinking. Show how your design philosophy aligns with these values by demonstrating deep empathy for the end user in all your case studies.

The interview process for the UX/UI Designer position at OsborneKlein / Ameriprise is comprehensive and designed to evaluate both your practical design skills and your alignment with the company culture. Candidates generally experience a structured, multi-stage loop that progresses from initial conversations to a deep-dive onsite evaluation.

The journey begins with an informal screening stage. This is often initiated by a recruiter or conducted offsite with a couple of team members. The focus here is to understand your professional background, current projects, and what you are looking for in your next role. It is also an opportunity for you to learn about the team culture, the practice's design philosophy, and the overall environment at Ameriprise.

Following a successful initial screen, you will move to the formal evaluation loop. This stage is rigorous and involves multiple back-to-back sessions with different team members, including peer designers, product partners, and senior leadership. You will go through a formal portfolio review, a structured behavioral interview, and a collaborative whiteboard exercise to assess your real-time problem-solving capabilities.

The timeline above details the typical progression of the interview loop, from the initial touchpoint to the final decision. Candidates should use this sequence to pace their preparation, ensuring they dedicate sufficient time to refining their portfolio presentation before entering the intense final loop. While the exact timeline can vary depending on candidate availability and team scheduling, the entire process generally takes about a month from start to finish.

To excel in your interviews, you must understand exactly what the hiring team is looking for in each key session. The evaluation is structured around three primary pillars: your design portfolio, your real-time problem-solving skills, and your behavioral alignment.

Portfolio Presentation & Case Studies

The portfolio review is the cornerstone of your evaluation. The panel wants to see how you think, how you collaborate, and how you execute. They are looking for structured storytelling that clearly outlines the problem, the constraints, your approach, and the final business and user outcomes.

Be ready to go over:

• User research integration – How you gathered user insights and how they directly influenced your design decisions.
• Iterative design process – Showing the evolution of your work from low-fidelity wireframes to high-fidelity interactive prototypes.
• Business impact – Connecting your design solutions to tangible metrics, such as increased conversion, reduced drop-off, or improved advisor efficiency.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Creating responsive layouts for complex data grids and managing shared component libraries within a larger design system.

Example scenarios:

• "Walk us through a project where you had to design a complex financial workflow under tight regulatory or compliance constraints."
• "Show us a case study where user testing proved your initial design assumptions wrong, and explain how you pivoted the user experience."

Whiteboard Design Challenge

The whiteboard exercise is designed to assess how you collaborate and solve problems under pressure. The interviewers do not expect a polished, final UI. Instead, they want to observe your methodology: how you define scope, identify user personas, map out flows, and sketch layout ideas.

Be ready to go over:

• Problem framing – Asking clarifying questions to narrow down an ambiguous prompt before you start sketching.
• User-centered mapping – Defining the user's goals, pain points, and the core tasks they need to accomplish.
• Information architecture – Organizing content logically on the screen and establishing a clear visual hierarchy.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Accounting for edge cases, error states, and accessibility requirements in your real-time sketches.

Example scenarios:

• "Sketch out a dashboard experience that allows a financial advisor to quickly identify which client accounts require immediate attention."
• "Design a mobile-first onboarding flow for a new client trying to link their external bank accounts to their wealth portfolio."

Behavioral & Stakeholder Management

This session evaluates your emotional intelligence, adaptability, and communication style. Designing at a large institution like Ameriprise requires navigating diverse stakeholder opinions, technical limitations, and compliance reviews.

Be ready to go over:

• Handling constructive feedback – How you receive critique from design peers and non-design stakeholders.
• Influencing without authority – How you advocate for the user and convince cross-functional partners of the value of your design solutions.
• Developer collaboration – Your approach to ensuring design quality is maintained during the engineering implementation phase.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Navigating situations where business goals directly conflict with the optimal user experience.

Example scenarios:

• "Tell me about a time you had to present a design to a senior stakeholder who had a completely different vision. How did you handle the situation?"
• "Describe a time when you had to compromise on your ideal design to meet a critical product launch deadline."