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Design Exercise Examples

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You can find more examples here.

Bus Kiosk Station

This design challenge is from "How to evaluate a designer with a design exercise" by Braden Kowitz.

Imagine we’re designing a kiosk at a transit stop. Its purpose is to let regular commuters refill their transit cards. We have an engineer coming in 20 minutes and he needs a spec. In that time, we need to explain exactly how this kiosk should work."

We’ve provided a design goal, user description, and time limit. Now start drawing the machine on the whiteboard and explain as we go.

Starting design for the bus kiosk station exercise.
  • This machine lets regular commuters re-fill their transit card with cash.
  • There are four push buttons, and a 40-character text display next to each button.
  • There’s a card reader, bill acceptor, and dollar-coin return.

If you ask the right questions, you find some constraints are:

Additional Constraints
  • Actually the max allowed on a card is $50.
  • That dot on the bill acceptor? Oh yeah, that’s a light we can turn on and off.
  • The machine is right next to a station agent, who can help with anything.
  • Reference & Answer

    Airport Restaurant Order

    This design challenge is from "5 steps to master whiteboard design challenge" by Zhenshuo Fang.

    Design an ordering interface for an airport restaurant.

    Example environment for the airport restaurant.

    For practice, write down some questions about the scenario before looking at the constraints.

    Additional Constraints
  • What is the goal of the design? A: An efficient, hassle-free, and fun dining experience for busy travelers
  • What kind of airport? A: International airport
  • What kind of restaurant? A: A dine-in restaurant with food and drinks
  • What kind of device? A: Tablet devices on each table
  • These should be enough to get you started.

    Reference & Answer

    Hotel Booking and Reservation

    Design a hotel booking and reservation system for a travel agency.

    Additional Constraints
  • Responsive website.
  • The primary market is United States.
  • There are thousands of hotels to pick from.
  • Hotels may already have reservations or are unavailable during certain dates.
  • What I'm looking for
  • How do users find the hotel? Search? Through navigation?
  • If search, how do they handle forms for simple and complex inputs? Do they account for all necessary inputs like number of guests, adults, children, check-in and check-out date? Do they make fields required?
  • Do they account for users who are just window shopping?
  • Do they show the rates for the different types of rooms? Availability?
  • How do they handle the checkout process? Do they make users sign in or create an account?
  • Do they end the flow after booking? Or do they redirect the users?
  • Do they talk about additional content that might be displayed or useful to the user outside of the necessary/minimum requirements needed to book? Travel warnings, regulations, hotel rules, advice, tips, things to know, weather warnings, activities, map & location, etc.
  • Do they express any technical knowledge about APIs? Loading times & loading screens?
  • Online Slot Machine

    Design the UI for a slot machine.

    Example casino environment for the slot machine
    • Don't worry about the specifics of win conditions & game mechanics.
    • When the slots meet a certain win condition, trigger a special game event where players can win more money.
    • For the game event, the UI should indicate the number of free spins left and the current win multiplier.
    Additional Constraints
  • It's for a machine in a casino.
  • The primary market is United States.
  • It should be fun, addictive, and profitable for the casino.
  • It has one large digital display & built-in speakers.
  • It has touch controls and a single physical circular button that can be lit up.
  • The machine reads a card to withdraw and deposit the player's credits.
  • The user should be able to change the bet amount. Use the denominations 10, 20, 50, 100.
  • There should be at least 3 reels but no more than 5.
  • There should be at 5 different symbols on a reel but no more than 8.
  • What I'm looking for
    Slot designs can reveal a significant amount of their knowledge of dark patterns, human psychology & cognition, design ethics, and demonstrates how powerful UX can be.
  • Do they make use of color, sound, and motion? How do they change over time?
  • How did they decide which symbols to use? How many reels?
  • Does it have all the necessary controls & displays? Spin, increase & decrease bet amount, current bet amount, current balance, the previous amount won, amount won, volume controls, game information
  • Do they understand the underlying psychology and behavior?
  • What do they do to make the game addictive? Fun? Do they use a purposeful value hierarchy or any targeted messaging? Do they talk about visuals or animations?
  • Do they account for all use cases & tasks? Insert card, spin, increase bet, decrease bet, return card, wins, game events, not enough credits, game error.
  • Follow up question
    Technology is increasingly designed to be addictive.
  • How could you make it less addictive?
  • How would you advocate for these changes in your organization?
  • References

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