Week 4: practise out loud until it feels ordinary

Knowing the answer and saying it well under pressure are different skills. This final week is almost entirely speaking practice.

Present your case studies aloud

Reading your notes silently proves nothing. Tell each project to a person, or record yourself. Check three things: do you reach the point quickly, do you explain why and not only what, and do you finish on time?

Behavioural and stakeholder examples

Prepare short, true stories for the questions every design interview asks:

• A disagreement with a product manager or engineer, and how it ended.
• Feedback you disagreed with, and what you did.
• A project that went wrong, and what you took from it.
• A time you worked with limited time, data or people.

Shape each as situation, what you did, what happened, what you learned, in about two minutes. Avoid blaming people, and be specific.

Timed design challenges

Run two or three under real conditions: a clock, a prompt you have not seen, and someone watching. Spend the first part clarifying, the middle on one focused idea, and leave a few minutes to summarise and name what you would test next.

Refine with feedback

After every practice session, write down one thing to keep and one to change. Ask the person listening: where did you lose me? Fix that, then run it again.

The last two days

Stop learning new things. Reread your running notes, prepare questions to ask the team, check the logistics, and sleep. You have done the work.