Developer Handoff interview questions
Developer Handoff questions a UX / UI designer can be asked, from first job to senior. Open one to see the strongest answer and why it works.
What must a handoff include besides the happy frame?
The strongest answer: Empty, error, loading, permissions, and the copy — I do not send a pretty frame and vanish
Why it works: Exactly. States and words. Links, gifs, and pop are how week two surprises arrive.
- Handoff: empty, error, loading, permissions, copy.
- Do not vanish after a pretty frame.
- A link ≠ a handoff.
- “Pop” is not a spec.
Why is lorem ipsum a problem in a handoff?
The strongest answer: It hides whether the words fit, scold, or fail — I write real copy or mark it as a leftover
Why it works: Exactly. Words are the UI. Engineering-will-write and fake legal are how you ship a tone you never chose.
- Use real copy or mark the leftover.
- Lorem hides fit and tone.
- Do not leave words to engineering.
- Do not fake legal text.
Engineering asks for the assets from your screen. What do you hand over, and in what form?
The strongest answer: Icons and flat shapes as SVG, photographs as compressed raster at the sizes actually used, everything named consistently — and anything the system already owns I point at rather than export
Why it works: Right — and the useful half of the answer is not exporting things the design system already owns.
- Right format, right source.
- SVG for icons and flat shapes.
- Compressed raster for photographs.
- Reference system assets, do not re-export.
Engineering asks which grey. What do you point at?
The strongest answer: A token or a system value — I do not paste a hex from a screenshot
Why it works: Exactly. Tokens. Vibes, zooms, and marketing eye-drops are how you get four greys.
- Point at a token.
- Do not paste a screenshot hex.
- Do not say “looks right.”
- Do not eye-drop marketing.
Do you still need a conversation if the file is tidy?
The strongest answer: Yes — leftovers and why — a tidy file without a talk still hides a decision
Why it works: Exactly. Talk the leftovers. Self-serve, monologues, and files-or-talks binaries miss the join.
- Walk leftovers even if the file is tidy.
- Tidy ≠ self-serve.
- Do not monologue and vanish.
- Keep both file and talk.
What annotation actually helps engineering?
The strongest answer: Behaviour: overflow, empty, and what is a token — not “make it sing”
Why it works: Exactly. Behaviour and tokens. History novels, emojis, and invented animation percentiles do not implement.
- Annotate overflow, empty, tokens.
- Not “make it sing.”
- Not a history novel.
- No invented animation percentile.
You hand over a desktop frame and a phone frame for the same page.
What does engineering still not know?
The strongest answer: Everything between them: what wraps, what stacks, what truncates, the minimum and maximum widths, and what happens when the text is twice as long after translation
Why it works: Exactly — two frames are two samples; the rules between them are the design, and long content is where they break.
- Specify rules, not only frames.
- Say what wraps, stacks and truncates.
- Give minimum and maximum widths.
- Test with long translated text.
What does a staff-level handoff look like during build?
The strongest answer: Office hours on leftovers, and you join QA of states — I do not disappear after the link
Why it works: Exactly. Stay for states. Dumps, vision-purity, and pixel-police without behaviour fail the ship.
- Stay for leftovers and state QA.
- Do not vanish after the link.
- Do not refuse implementation.
- Do not only pixel-police.
What do you look at in design QA besides spacing?
The strongest answer: Empty, error, focus, and the words — I do not only nudge 2px on the happy path
Why it works: Exactly. States and words. Happy-only, pixel-religion, and feeling-skip miss the bug the user will hit.
- QA empty, error, focus, copy.
- Not only 2px on happy.
- Not only 1440.
- Pixel-perfect ≠ state-complete.
What do you standardise in handoffs across the company?
The strongest answer: States, tokens, and a living leftover — I do not standardise every cover page
Why it works: Exactly. States and leftovers. Covers, required humans, and novels are queues and shelves.
- Standardise states, tokens, leftovers.
- Let covers differ.
- Do not sit in every handoff.
- Do not write a shelf novel.
What is design ops for?
The strongest answer: The path: files, research home, and how work reaches eng — I do not hire ops to pick a favourite plugin
Why it works: Exactly. The path. Plugin police, novels, and invented utilisation are how ops becomes décor.
- Ops = files, research home, path to eng.
- Not plugin police.
- Not a shelf novel.
- No utilisation percentile.