Hey and welcome back to another week! 👋 

In this issue:

• The Feared Whiteboard Challenge: Let me take your fear with my guide to this dreaded part of the interview process.

• Michelle’s Portfolio: See what a freelance portfolio can look like early in your career

🤝 TODAY’S PARTNER

Marketing ideas for marketers who hate boring

The best marketing ideas come from marketers who live it.

That’s what this newsletter delivers.

The Marketing Millennials is a look inside what’s working right now for other marketers. No theory. No fluff. Just real insights and ideas you can actually use—from marketers who’ve been there, done that, and are sharing the playbook.

Every newsletter is written by Daniel Murray, a marketer obsessed with what goes into great marketing. Expect fresh takes, hot topics, and the kind of stuff you’ll want to steal for your next campaign.

Because marketing shouldn’t feel like guesswork. And you shouldn’t have to dig for the good stuff.

Subscribe Free

Mastering Whiteboard Challenges as a Designer 🖊️

Whiteboard challenges are one of the most dreaded parts of the interview process for many designers. Sitting in front of a panel, being asked to solve a design problem on the spot, while people watch your every move — it sounds stressful.

But here’s the truth: whiteboard challenges don’t have to be scary. In fact, I’d argue they’re often a much fairer and better alternative to take-home design tasks. Why? Because they assess skills that are closer to the reality of working as a designer: thinking on your feet, collaborating, communicating, and structuring a problem.

They’re not perfect. If you struggle with social anxiety, they can feel more daunting than sitting at home with a take-home brief. But design is a job where you’ll need to talk to people — users, peers, stakeholders — and present your work regularly. A whiteboard challenge simulates that more than you might think.

In this guide, I’ll walk through what whiteboard challenges actually are, what they aren’t, what the structure usually looks like, and how you can prepare so you feel confident when one comes your way.

What a Whiteboard Challenge Is (and Isn’t)

A whiteboard challenge is a live design exercise, typically lasting 30–60 minutes. You’re given a task — often something generic but still relevant to the role — and asked to work toward a solution while a small panel (usually two to three people) observes.

Crucially, it’s not about creating polished high-fidelity designs in Figma. You’ll mostly be sketching flows, drawing low-fidelity wireframes, or mapping journeys. Sometimes you’ll work in tools like FigJam or Miro; other times you’ll bring your own.

The goal isn’t the finished pixels. The goal is for the panel to see how you think, how you ask questions, how you make decisions, and how you manage your time.

That also means:

• It’s not a speed-design contest. If you’re asked to churn out a polished landing page in 45 minutes, that’s not a real whiteboard challenge — and it’s a red flag about the company.

• It’s not about perfection. You won’t be judged on aesthetics. You will be judged on process, clarity, and reasoning.

The Typical Structure

While challenges vary, most follow a common pattern. Here’s what you can expect:

1. The Task

You’re given a prompt: Design a social login flow, sketch a landing page, map a checkout journey. Sometimes you’ll get extra context or constraints (e.g. “assume we only support Google and Apple login”). Sometimes you won’t.

2. Clarify and Ask Questions

This is your chance to frame the problem properly. Ask targeted questions:

• What’s the (business) goal behind this feature? (e.g. increasing sign-ups)

• Are there known constraints? (technical, business, regulatory)

• Who are the users?

If the panel doesn’t know or leaves something vague, make an assumption — and flag it clearly. This shows you can move forward under uncertainty. But make sure that people understand what you are doing so don’t forget to comment on it.

3. Define the Goal

From the task, answers, and assumptions, distill a clear goal. “The goal is to make sign-up easier and increase conversion rates by offering social login.” Write it down on your board. This anchors everything that follows. You can check on that goal with the audience and ask “would you add anything to that?” to ensure you are giving everyone the chance to steer.

4. Sketch the Solution

Now you move into solutioning. The deliverable depends on the task:

• For a login flow → a user flow diagram.

• For a landing page → a quick wireframe.

• For a system process → a journey map.

Don’t overcomplicate it. The solution should be something you could show to a stakeholder and say: “Here’s a direction we could explore — what do you think?”

Most of the time you will only have time and be expected to deliver one single deliverable. Obviously watch the task you were given. They might ask for a specific deliverable or multiple ones. In that case you have to adjust your time management for that.

Most of your time will be spent here in general. Talk as you go. Narrate your reasoning: “I’m placing the Google login first because earlier you said it’s the most used option among our users.” Reference back to your assumptions and answers. This is what demonstrates data-driven decision-making.

5. Wrap Up

When time’s up, or when you feel your solution is complete enough, stop. Expect questions: Why did you prioritize X over Y? Why didn’t you include Z? Answer honestly. If you considered it, say so. If you didn’t, explain what you’d do next with more time. This is also a chance to reflect on what you would have done in a next step or what you would have done in the earlier stages where you defined the goal if you had more time or resources.

Pro tip: Using AI during a whiteboard challenge (smartly)

It’s 2025—if the company allows it, using AI can help you explore options faster and show range under time pressure. Two high-leverage uses:

1. Rapid scaffolding

   Use tools like Lovable or UXPilot to spin up wireframes or a quick interactive prototype you can point to while you narrate decisions. Keep ownership: you curate, simplify, and adapt what comes back—don’t just accept the first output.

2. Background research while you work

   Spin up ChatGPT or Claude in a separate window to dig for constraints, patterns, edge cases, and acceptance criteria. For example, while you’re clarifying the task for a social login, ask: “From a designer’s perspective, what are common pitfalls and constraints when designing social login?” Let it run while you interview the panel; return to harvest the useful signals and label them as assumptions or considerations.

A few guardrails to de-risk this:

• Ask permission first

  Briefly state how you’ll use AI: “I’d like to sanity-check constraints and generate a rough scaffold to discuss. I’ll keep narrating and make the decisions.”

• Timebox hard

  Give each AI step a strict budget (e.g., 2–3 minutes for research, 3–5 minutes for a scaffold). If the tool stalls or the result isn’t usable, abort and move on.

• Practice your stack

  Rehearse with your exact tools and prompts so you know their latency and failure modes. Have a prepared wireframe kit and a simple flow diagram stencil ready as your instant fallback.

• Show your thinking, not just outputs

  Paste the prompt and a clipped result onto the board, highlight what you kept or changed, and tie it back to your goal and constraints. AI is your accelerant, not your argument.

Used this way, AI lets you explore more breadth in the same time and still demonstrate judgment, communication, and process—exactly what a whiteboard challenge is meant to surface.

How to Prepare

You can’t predict the exact task you’ll get. But you can absolutely prepare for the format. Here’s how:

Practice Under Real Conditions

The single best way to prepare is to simulate the experience as closely as possible — with strict time limits. Give yourself a mock task (plenty are floating around online, or you can use my custom GPT interview coach to run it for you), set a 45–60 minute timer, and run through the full flow: asking questions, defining a goal, sketching a solution, and wrapping up.

Don’t just design in silence. Narrate your thinking out loud as if a panel were watching you. This trains you to speak while sketching, which is one of the hardest but most important skills in a whiteboard challenge.

Afterwards, review your timing. Did you spend 15 minutes on questions and run out of time to sketch? Did you over-polish one part of the solution instead of finishing the flow? These are exactly the pitfalls you want to catch in practice, not in the real thing.

If you want to push it further, practice with a friend or peer who can play the role of interviewer. Have them answer your questions (or refuse to), so you get used to making assumptions and moving forward. If you don’t have someone to practice with, you can still simulate the structure yourself — but keep the discipline of the clock.

The goal isn’t to “win” the practice exercise with a perfect design. The goal is to build fluency with the time pressure, the narration, and the structure, so the real thing feels like just another rep.

Set Up a Template Board

Have a FigJam or Miro template ready. Create sections for: task, questions, assumptions, goal, solution sketches, notes. Even if the company provides a board, you can often copy your structure over. This helps you stay organized and calm.

Choose Quick Wireframe Kits

Don’t reinvent the wheel. Use standard wireframe kits or Figma’s built-in design system. This isn’t about aesthetics. It’s about speed and clarity. Just make sure you have a kit or system available that you are comfortable with before the challenge.

Get Comfortable Narrating

This is harder than it sounds. Practice talking while you sketch. Imagine you’re presenting to a stakeholder. Explain what you’re doing and why, without waiting for feedback.

Why Whiteboard Challenges Are Fairer

Compared to take-home tasks, whiteboard challenges require less free labor and give you immediate feedback. They reveal how you think under constraints, how you ask questions, and how you communicate — all skills you’ll use daily on the job. They also take roughly the same amount of time from the interviewers as they do from you.

They’re not perfect either of course. But if you understand what they are (and aren’t), manage your time, and practice the format, they don’t have to be intimidating.

The goal isn’t to produce polished designs in an hour. The goal is to show your process. Nail that, and you’ll turn what feels like a trap into one of your strongest assets in an interview.

👀 Portfolio Showcase

Today: Michelle Irby

Michelle Irby’s portfolio is a polished and promising showcase for freelance (product) design.

A Berlin-based interaction designer, Michelle has shaped her portfolio around the realities of freelance work — and that makes it an especially useful example for anyone taking this path early in their career. Unlike portfolios aimed squarely at full-time roles, her site blends clean presentation with a clear articulation of services, pricing, and process. It’s not just a gallery of projects — it’s a sales tool.

Let’s take a closer look at what Michelle is doing well — and two areas that could make her portfolio even stronger.

That’s it for this week—thanks so much for the support! ♥️

If you’d like to support my efforts on Open Doors further you can buy me a coffee. If you ever got any value from my emails consider it so I can keep this newsletter free and available to everyone out there.

Do you want your own portfolio reviewed in-depth with a 30-minute advice-packed video review? Or do you require mentoring to figure out a proper strategy for your job search?

I got you!

• Book an in-depth portfolio or resume review with me

• Book a mentoring session with me

• Book a quick 15 min chat to ask a question and see if we vibe

Keep kicking doors open and see you next week!
- Florian