What I actually look for
I have reviewed hundreds of design portfolios over the past few years. Beautiful visual work. Polished case studies. Elegant prototypes. And most of them tell me almost nothing about whether someone can do the job.
The skill I value most -- and the one hardest to assess -- is systems thinking. The ability to see how a design decision in one area ripples across an entire product. The ability to hold multiple layers of a problem in your head simultaneously. The ability to zoom out.
Why systems thinking matters
Most products are not collections of independent screens. They are interconnected systems where data flows, user mental models span contexts, and a change in one place has consequences elsewhere.
Designers who think in screens produce inconsistent products. Designers who think in systems produce coherent ones.
In defense technology, this is amplified. Our products integrate sensor data, AI models, human decisions, and operational workflows into unified experiences. A designer who cannot see the whole system will optimize one view while breaking three others.
How I assess it in interviews
I have moved away from portfolio-only evaluations. Instead, I use a few techniques:
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The ripple question. I describe a design change and ask the candidate to trace its implications across the product. Where else does this decision matter? What breaks? What improves?
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The constraint exercise. I give a design problem with conflicting constraints and ask them to articulate the tradeoffs. I am less interested in their solution than in how they frame the problem.
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The "why" ladder. I pick a decision in their portfolio and ask "why" five times. Designers who think in systems can trace their choices back to principles. Others bottom out at "it looked good" or "that's the convention."
I have never regretted hiring a systems thinker. I have frequently regretted hiring someone with a beautiful portfolio but no structural thinking.
What systems thinkers do differently
- They create frameworks, not just screens
- They ask about data flows and state management early in the design process
- They think about edge cases as system behaviors, not individual screen problems
- They document patterns and principles, not just pixels
- They push back on feature requests by asking how they fit into the larger system
Building a team of systems thinkers
This is not about hiring exclusively senior designers. I have met junior designers with natural systems intuition and senior designers who have spent a decade perfecting pixels without ever zooming out.
What matters is whether someone is curious about how things connect. You can teach tools, patterns, and domain knowledge. You cannot easily teach someone to care about coherence.
Hire for how people think, not just what they produce.