How to hire interaction designers

An interaction designer (IxD), sometimes called an interactive designer, ensures your company’s website, apps, and other digital products are as good as possible. Without the best IxD on your team, you risk leaving users with a clunky digital experience that fails to drive revenue and build brand loyalty.

There’s some overlap between UI/UX designer skills and IxD skills. However, an IxD focuses specifically on how users navigate the interactive elements of a website or software product.

To hire the right IxD for your business, you’ll need to assess a candidate’s UI/UX designer skills and fully understand their approach to digital design.

This guide provides top tips for hiring interaction designers so you can quickly find a candidate to make your digital products shine.

What you need to know before hiring an interaction designer

Before hiring an IxD, you should consider the following factors.

Existing design team

IxD is often considered a subset of UX design. However, it’s a distinct role focused on how users interact with a digital product. IxDs often work alongside UX and UI designers. The candidate you hire must be familiar with UX and UI principles and bring a unique design approach.

If you’re hiring a UX designer and an IxD simultaneously – especially if they will work on the same project – it’s important to evaluate how your top candidates’ specialties will complement each other.

If your business doesn’t already have a team of UX and UI designers, you may consider hiring a single candidate who has experience with IxD, UX, and UI. This works best for small projects since a single designer won’t have the same capabilities as a multi-disciplinary design team.

Project duration

Whether you need a full-time IxD, a part-time designer, or a temporary contractor will depend on the length of your project.

If you have a one-off project that will only last a few months, you could save money by hiring a temporary contractor. 

Hiring a permanent designer for multiple software products or a long-term project can minimize disruptions from contractor turnover.

Project complexity

Complex software products demand an IxD with years of experience and a creative approach to problem-solving. But competition for these experienced designers can be fierce, so you may have to budget for a larger compensation package.

If you’re designing a relatively simple app, entry-level designers may be more cost-effective for this type of project.

How to find compensation data for interaction designers

As previously mentioned, you’ll need to consider what kind of compensation package you can offer when hiring a designer.

Check online job sites to see what other companies are offering for similar roles. According to Glassdoor, the average salary for an IxD is $103,000 per year.

Non-monetary benefits can also play a significant role in attracting top candidates. For example, generous remote work, parental leave, and time-off policies can all help your company stand out to applicants.

Skills and qualifications to look for in an interaction designer

A good IxD will bring a wide range of hard and soft skills to your team. Here are some of the key skills to look for when hiring.

User research

An IxD needs to understand how users interact with your website, app, or software. To do that effectively, candidates must be comfortable surveying potential users and evaluating their interaction with product mock-ups. IxDs should be able to take the data they collect to modify a design to meet your product objectives better.

Wireframing

Wireframing is an important technical skill for interaction designers. A wireframe serves as a blueprint for how your product will look and how the different elements will be laid out.

IxDs need the ability to create wireframes using tools like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. Ideally, the candidate you hire will already be familiar with your team's software for creating and editing wireframes.

Programming

IxDs should have an understanding of widely used programming languages such as Javascript, PHP, and CSS. The ability to code in these languages allows designers to quickly make small changes to a product without involving your team’s software developers.

Communication

IxDs must communicate clearly with UX and UI designers, software developers, project managers, and others on your team. It’s important that they can explain why they design each element in a specific way. Good communication is also essential for reaching compromises when disagreements occur within your team.

Time management

IxDs often need to meet tight deadlines. So, they must know how to manage their time well and prioritize tasks. Candidates should also have effective ways to deal with stress so they don’t get burned out.

Where to find skilled interaction designers

To hire top IxDs, you need to know where to look to recruit candidates.

Large online job boards are a good place to start your search. Many designers look for open jobs on sites like Indeed, Glassdoor, and ZipRecruiter.

You can also look for candidates on networking platforms like LinkedIn, where there are several groups for interaction designers – including one specifically for freelance designers. You can also quickly find professionals who list interaction design as a skill and invite them to apply for your role.

Another place to look for IxDs is freelance marketplaces, such as Upwork and Freelancer. These sites are best for contracting a designer for a short-term project, but you may be able to recruit a designer for a longer-term role.

4 creative ways to find interaction designer candidates

In the competitive market for interaction design talent, it can help to get creative with your candidate search. Here are four approaches to try.

1. Share your role on social media 

You might not target interaction designers with your company’s social media. However, there’s a good chance that someone in your audience knows a design professional and can tell them about your interaction designer job description and job ad.

2. Recruit from design boot camps 

There are many online and in-person “bootcamp” courses that train new interaction designers. You can work with course organizers to share your open role with recent graduates.

3. Network in interaction design forums

Forums like Reddit’s r/UXDesign page are a meeting place for professional interaction designers, UI and UX engineers, and software developers. You’re not allowed to post jobs in this forum. But you can search through posts to find knowledgeable designers and contact them directly about your job.

4. Advertise on creative job sites

Job boards for creative professionals, such as Dribble, can help you find candidates for IxD roles who you’ve yet to consider. These candidates may focus more on the design aspects of IxD rather than the technical aspects. However, they can bring problem-solving skills that complement your team’s existing UX and UI skills.

How to select the best interaction designer candidates

The best way to narrow down your pool of IxD candidates is to use a combination of job-specific skills tests, personality tests, and behavioral interview questions. Using these enables you to fully understand the value an IxD will bring to your team.

Assess hard and soft skills with expert-designed tests

Assessing IxD candidates' skills is easy with TestGorilla. We offer more than 350 tests, including a UX and UI design test that evaluates each applicant’s ability to design digital experiences.

TestGorilla also has programming skills tests for languages like Java and PHP and software skills tests for tools like Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.

You can mix and match these skills tests with personality tests, culture add tests, work motivation tests, and more. Combining these into a single assessment gives you a holistic view of each IxD candidate.

Go deeper with one-way video interviews

Another powerful tool TestGorilla offers is one-way video interviews. These enable you to ask questions about a candidate’s experience and learn about their approach to collaborative projects.

You can also incorporate UX interview questions and web design interview questions. You can add custom one-way video interview questions to any TestGorilla assessment.

Learn more: Guide to creating an assessment in TestGorilla

Use TestGorilla to find the best candidates

TestGorilla is especially powerful when used early on in your hiring process. You can build an assessment to evaluate interaction, UX, and UI design skills, then use the results to decide which candidates to advance to the next round of your interview process.

Common mistakes when hiring an interaction designer

Ending up with the wrong interaction designer at the end of your hiring process can cost your company time and money. Worse, it can set your project timeline back by months – or longer.

Here are some common mistakes to avoid when hiring an IxD for your business.

Not assessing culture fit

An IxD might have the right skills to help you build great digital experiences. However, your team's productivity could suffer if they don’t fit your company’s culture.

You can use TestGorilla’s Culture Add test to ensure a candidate fits your company’s values.

Assuming skills based on an applicant’s resume

Relying on resumes alone can be misleading as it’s impossible to know if a candidate’s skills will meet your needs. Including pre-employment testing in your hiring process helps prevent costly mis-hires.

With TestGorilla’s UX and UI designer tests, you can assess applicants’ familiarity with common tools like Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, programming languages like PHP and CSS, and more.

Use TestGorilla to hire the best interaction designer for your team

Hiring a top IxD can help your team build seamless digital products that increase conversions and revenue. Making the right hire requires you to look beyond candidates’ resumes and thoroughly assess them with expert-designed skills tests and behavioral interview questions. 

TestGorilla offers a wide range of UI designer tests, soft skills tests, and personality and culture tests to help you make the perfect hire every time.

Create a TestGorilla account today to build your first assessment for free and find the best IxD for your team.