Different types of Design Challenges

White-boarding challenge- A challenge that is usually done live in front of the interview team. This type of challenge will allow you to collaborate with the interviewing designers and demonstrate your ability to problem-solve.

Take home design challenge- An assessment provided to you by a company to work on within a specific time frame (from what I found ranges from 12 hours to 3 days).

For my first weekly design challenge, I treated it as a white-boarding challenge, and felt like I totally bombed it. After learning more, I found that this is a more common technique used during the interview process, however, there are some companies that are still sending out take home design challenges/assessments. Even though I wanted to try and ace my technique for white-boarding challenges, after I completed my first challenge, I decided to treat my second one as a take home challenge to give myself practice into both types of challenges (I feel like I bombed this one too, but I think it’s because it was the first go around for both).

Moving forward, I’ll do a different type of challenge each week to make sure I’m working on the skills needed for both. I also found a handy article that breaks down the process and suggests things to do to prepare for each type of challenge, which I will use as a guide as I gain more experiences with these challenges.

Stay tuned for my progress!