Karen Karapetyan · Senior Product Designer at AleNet Tecnologies
Assessed
Sep 16, 2026
Verification
UX Flow and Interaction Critique
Verdict: borderline — Alfred is three years in and genuinely motivated to grow, which came through the whole session and is his biggest asset right now.
5 partial
The core gap is that his UX is execution without the reasoning underneath it: he can run the steps of a process but can't yet say what each step is for or when to reach for it, and his flows cover the happy path only. He isn't framing his work as a problem being solved for a user or a business, which also shows when he presents, so the work reads as a set of screens rather than a story with a point. UI is his strongest area and it holds up because it's grounded in real hands-on experience. The raw material and the attitude are both here. The gap is understanding, not effort, and with focused work on UX fundamentals and storytelling he would be a noticeably stronger candidate in a couple of months.
Skill matrix
5 skills probed in the session
UX Design
Partial
Asked why he chose a particular research or mapping step, he could describe what he did but not what the step was meant to answer or which decision it was there to unblock. The process was followed, the reasoning behind it was not there yet.
UX Strategy
Partial
When I asked how he would know the flow succeeded for the user or the business, he stayed at the level of the screens. He did not connect the design to an outcome, a user need, or a metric.
UI Design
Partial
His visual decisions were the most confident part of the session. Hierarchy and component choices held up and were clearly grounded in hands-on work, though he leaned on habit more than a rationale he could state out loud.
Product Design
Partial
He presented the work as a collection of screens rather than a problem being solved. When pushed on who it was for and what business or user need it served, that framing was not there.
Interaction Design
Partial
His user flow covered the happy path only. When I asked for the error, empty, and loading states, and what happens if a step fails, those had not been considered or designed.
Evidence
What happened in the session
Walked through his user flow start to finish, but only the happy path. Error, empty, loading, and failure states had not been designed, and "what happens if this step fails" was a question he had not asked himself.
Could name the UX steps he had run but not their purpose or when to use them. He said things close to "I did the research part" without being able to explain what that research was meant to answer or how it changed the design.
When asked to pitch the work as a case study, he described what the screens do rather than the user or business problem behind them. There was no through-line from problem to decision to outcome.
Strongest moment was defending his UI: hierarchy and component choices were solid and clearly came from real shipped work.
Throughout, he was open, coachable, and asked good questions about how to get better. He takes feedback well.
Action plan
What to do next
1
Learn the UX process by its purpose, not its name. For each stage (research, user flows, IA, usability testing), write one line on what problem it solves and when to reach for it. The goal is choosing the right method for the task in front of you, not running all of them by default. Which stage comes next should depend on what the previous one uncovered.
2
Redraw one existing flow with every state, not just the happy path: error, empty, loading, and recovery. Make "what happens if this fails?" the first question you ask of any flow.
3
Rewrite one past project as a case study built like a story: the user or business problem, what you tried, why you made each decision, and the result. Then present it out loud to a peer or lead. This directly targets both the framing gap and the stakeholder-presentation gap.
4
Re-attempt this verification in 8 weeks with the reworked flow and the rewritten case study.
5
Read "Articulating Design Decisions" by Tom Greever for presenting and defending your work, and work through Nielsen Norman Group's articles on when to use which UX method.
