Hire the Top 3% of Freelance Interactive Designers

The Demand for Interactive Design Continues to Expand

Interactive designers fuse graphic, experiential, and interface design skills to help marketing and advertising teams craft key user touch points, such as websites, kiosks, interactive exhibits, multimedia installations, retail displays, and immersive experiences. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, this rare combination of skills is in high demand: Designers focusing on digital communication, layout, usability, and navigation are expected to enjoy a 16 percent employment increase from 2022 to 2032. With technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality (AR) on the rise, interactive designers will play a prominent role in shaping the digital and immersive experiences of the future.

However, hiring a skilled freelance interactive designer can be challenging, especially considering the confusion between interactive and interaction design—the latter prioritizes reducing friction in human-computer interactions. Despite their similarities, the two disciplines differ in execution and focus. As the prominent design leader and writer Jesse James Garrett proposes in his book The Elements of User Experience, UX design has five levels, with interactive design as a critical link between visual and information design.

This guide clarifies what an interactive designer does, how to evaluate candidates’ qualifications, and how to determine your project’s objectives. We also address how to assess the fit of the designers you interview and provide tips for hiring the best interactive designer for your organization.

What attributes distinguish quality Interactive Designers from others?

Are you hoping to create a compelling interactive experience that engages customers and drives value for your business? For your project to succeed, you need to determine what skills your organization needs. Depending on your project, you may require an interactive designer with some or all of the following abilities:

User-centric Approach

A skilled interactive designer prioritizes the needs and preferences of users. User-centricity should be evident in a candidate’s portfolio, and they should be able to explain how their design decisions led to experiences that are intuitive, user-friendly, and accessible.

Technical Proficiency

Expert interactive designers effortlessly use digital design tools to bring their ideas to life. They are adept at software such as Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, Figma, and Sketch. Additionally, the candidate you hire should have in-depth experience designing devices such as laptops, smartphones, and tablets.

Aesthetic Sensibility

Interactive designers do a fair amount of graphic design work, including type formatting, color selection, and photo manipulation. The best interactive designers have an eye for what makes a visually appealing and emotionally engaging composition, and they know how to use aesthetic elements to communicate clearly.

Understanding of User Experience (UX) Principles

In addition to creating visually impressive designs, accomplished interactive designers have a firm grasp of UX principles. They have strong problem-solving abilities and can optimize design considerations, such as navigation, hierarchy, and consistency, to help users meet their objectives.

Continuous Learning

The digital design world is one of constant technological evolution. Skilled interactive designers stay abreast of the latest design trends, tools, processes, and methods. To benefit customers and clients, they actively seek ways to incorporate learnings into their projects.

In addition to the aforementioned attributes, accomplished interactive designers have portfolios demonstrating how their work creates effective interactions between users and devices. Their previous projects are aesthetically intriguing and display a high degree of functionality.

Accomplished interactive designers are also expert collaborators and communicators. They are comfortable working closely with other product team members, and they form strong relationships with diverse stakeholders such as brand managers, developers, and product managers.

How can you identify the ideal Interactive Designer for you?

Before you can assess a designer’s skills and fit for your organization, you need to clearly understand your project’s needs and understand the types of projects for which interactive designers are best suited.

Ground-up Project

A ground-up project involves creating a new digital product from conception to delivery. Ground-up projects can be quite complex because they typically involve cross-functional team dynamics, sometimes with competing objectives. The interactive designer you hire should be comfortable collaborating with stakeholders from departments like Engineering, Sales, and Marketing.

Improvement Project

Improvement projects aim to enhance existing digital products and experiences by introducing features, optimizing task flows, improving aesthetics, and addressing user-identified pain points. This type of project often has a tight timeline and requires an interactive designer who excels in a fast-paced environment.

Visionary Project

A visionary project explores futuristic ideas and isn’t always tied to a pressing business need. For instance, you might hire a forward-thinking interactive designer to imagine an immersive retail experience that blends augmented reality and architectural elements. Such a project might not be immediately feasible, but exploring novel concepts can help inform future design directions and inspire your company to embrace new ways of thinking about its products.

Culmination Project

Culmination projects examine a digital product’s interactions from a user perspective. For instance, during a culmination project, a product manager might perform usability testing and discover that users are confused by visual clutter when asked to locate your site’s search bar. In such a scenario, you’d need an interactive designer who understands why the clutter causes confusion and knows how to make actionable recommendations for stakeholders and other designers—such as adding more padding or whitespace around the search bar.

Once you define your project, you’ll need to decide whether to hire a seasoned interactive designer or someone newer to the field. Here’s what you can expect at the junior, mid-level, senior, and lead levels:

Junior Interactive Designer

Junior designers primarily assist senior designers with production tasks while ensuring that visual design principles and interaction concepts are upheld. Typically, a junior designer’s work is carried out under the guidance of a more experienced designer who provides constructive feedback and skills training.

Mid-level Interactive Designer

Mid-level designers can make conceptual decisions and routinely collaborate with cross-functional teams to produce design assets. They are highly proficient in using digital design tools and know how to make design decisions that support business objectives.

Senior Interactive Designer

Senior designers can oversee multiple projects, gather and prioritize business requirements, and iterate on designs to incorporate user feedback and align with marketing goals. At this level, the designer has a robust design process, collaborates with internal employees and external stakeholders, and makes critical design decisions that drive business value.

Lead Interactive Designer

Lead designers have all the capabilities of senior interactive designers, as well as the expertise to define the organization’s design strategy, manage design teams, lead design workshops with stakeholders, present design outcomes and performance to executives, and conduct user research to drive innovation.

How to Write an Interactive Design Job Description for Your Project

Writing a clear and compelling job description is crucial to attracting talented candidates to apply for your interactive designer position. Depending on your needs, your job description may prioritize some skills over others. For example, if your project involves an interactive retail display, you’ll want to attract candidates with industrial and environmental design experience. While every project has different needs, your job description should touch on these core interactive design skills:

UX / UI Design Awareness

Interactive designers need a firm grasp of UX and UI design principles to create user-friendly products and experiences that help people achieve their goals. For example, an interactive designer working on a project that aims to convert distracted users in a time-sensitive situation would benefit from knowing Hick’s Law, a prominent UX principle: “The time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices.”

Web Design Proficiency

The bulk of interactive design work centers around websites, and web design proficiency enables designers to create accessible, responsive, and intuitive web experiences that operate seamlessly across devices.

Freelance Design Experience

A freelance interactive designer could be a good fit if your project has a definite end date or you don’t have enough work to hire a full-time employee. Freelancers are used to working on a project for a set duration and then moving on, and they often possess excellent time-management and communication skills. Additionally, many freelancers have skills in specialty areas (such as AI and AR / VR) that can help your product stand out from your competitors.

Visual Design Mastery

Mastery of visual design empowers an interactive designer to craft engaging interfaces through color, typography, photo manipulation, and grid-based layouts. Any designer you decide to interview should have a compelling portfolio exhibiting their command of visual design principles such as emphasis, balance, and rhythm.

Digital Experience Design Knowledge

The interactive designer you hire should have in-depth knowledge of digital platforms and web applications, and their design constraints. For instance, a heads-up display poses different design challenges than a mobile device. Such knowledge enables the designer to communicate with users in ways relevant to the medium they use.

Mobile App Design Expertise

With the increase in mobile devices, interactive designers must know how to tailor experiences that are effective on smaller screens and easily navigated via touch and gestures.

What are the most important Interactive Designer interview questions?

When interviewing interactive designers, it’s crucial to ask questions that will help you assess their skills, experience, and fit with your organization:

Can you walk me through your design decision-making process for a project in your portfolio?

This question allows the designer to showcase their best work and explain the thinking that goes into their design choices. It also helps you get a feel for their problem-solving abilities when faced with real-world design issues. Top candidates will be able to articulate how their design solution met client and user needs.

Can you tell me about a situation where you had to compromise with stakeholders on an interactive design decision?

This is an opportunity to assess the designer’s communication and collaboration skills. This question often reveals how the designer handles feedback and navigates stakeholder relationships. Skilled interactive designers can achieve a balance between advocating for the best design solution and incorporating stakeholder feedback linked to business objectives.

How do you prioritize accessibility in your interactive design work?

Accessible design is essential to ensure that digital products can be enjoyed by as many people as possible, including people with visual, auditory, and fine-motor disabilities. On many occasions, the accessible choice is also the best design choice. For instance, ensuring that text is legible or implementing a high-contrast color scheme (accessibility basics) benefits all users.

How do you hand off an interactive design project to developers?

Successful collaboration between designer and developer is crucial in interactive design projects. Quality candidates will likely discuss how they pass along user data, provide interactive prototypes, hold designer/developer standups, and track bugs and design issues that arise during development.

What’s your approach to time management and meeting deadlines in a fast-paced environment?

Answers to this question will help you assess the designer’s effectiveness when working on time-sensitive projects. Look for candidates who are process-oriented and able to meet tight deadlines without sacrificing design quality.

Why do companies hire Interactive Designers?

Interactive design is where disciplines and experiences intersect. It incorporates aspects of UX, UI, and graphic design to enhance human-computer interactions in physical and digital environments.

Hiring the right interactive designer might seem daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. The main things to remember as you embark on the hiring process are to:

• Clarify your project’s scope and goals.
• Write a compelling job description.
• Identify candidates who align with your company’s needs.
• Ask thoughtful interview questions.

Companies hire interactive designers to increase conversion rates, improve user engagement, and give their products a competitive edge. A talented interactive designer can help increase the value of your company’s digital product by optimizing its efficiency, usability, and aesthetic appeal.