Sharpen those design skills!
Challenge yourself with Sharpen.design
Shunning spec work, more and more companies and agencies opt for hypothetical design challenges to see how candidates think through problems during an interview. It’s valuable to know how you perform when facing an unexpected project brief, and stress testing your craft and process are core to improving your skill set.
Everyone’s heard the infamous stories about Google interview questions, so when I was invited for a round of onsite interviews, I came up with a way of anticipating random, difficult design challenges: mixing up slips of paper with clients and briefs written on them, and pulling one of each from hats. In no time, I’d have a randomly-generated design prompt to practice with. They’d be formatted like: “Design a landing page / for NASA”. The more unusual the prompt, the better.
Although I ended up starting my career at an IoT startup instead of Google, I kept practicing with the paper-slips to continue working on my craft in the after-hours. I’d tackle one or two design challenges every week, in addition to the usual side projects, just to stay sharp. These little paper slips quickly became my self-taught path to becoming a better designer.
Hundreds of slips of paper and 2 years later, I ended up using this same exact method to prep for another round of interviews at Google. Except this time, I got the job.
I wanted to share this system for practicing design skills, minus all the paper slips, so I teamed up with my good friend Anthony Gibson to build Sharpen.design.
Click the button, receive design prompts. No hats required.
Sharpen.design is on Product Hunt — if you find this free resource valuable, show us some love with an upvote! :)
