Hiring for Creativity tentatively accepted to CHI

Reviewer 1

Okay so this is so mid bro? Okay so this is a short paper about future hiring junior designers. Although the topic is not directly contributing to the practice HCI, I will count this as “topic of significant interest to a relatively broad segment of the CHI community” and review this as an argument supported by the research method, which the short paper format supports. Nevertheless, the qualitative research itself is also very robust with 17 participants.I appreciate that, although I don't know if I would use the word robust.

The main argument of the paper revolves around the idea that there exists a discrepancy between what designers are expected to do, and what is considered when hiring them. The argument is that this is especially caused by the shift to use of pre-defined design systems as the building blocks for digital UX.

The paper uses some industry sources (blogs), clearly states their use. I think it’s fair given the topic and nature of the paper.Thank you. There aren't really any scholarly articles on this, probably because real-life is moving at a pace that academic-life just can't understand. I am not familiar of any literature covering hiring designers and thus cannot evaluate if more suitable sources would have been available: its possibly there is none.

I enjoyed reading the paper and it was written well, and the language was concise. My only few issues are:

Both themes focus on hiring junior designers, but this is not motivated in the introduction clear enough. I think this is motivated personally by the authors stated experience as a designer educator – I don’t think there is shame for stating that and it is very fitting to the argument type of a paper.

There is a premise in the paper that portfolios don’t contain evidence of critically questioning the assignments and this is based on a single journal source that made one mention of lack of diversity in portfolios – I can let it pass as the portfolios are discussed also by the interviewees, and the main argument isn’t about designers’ portfolios but skills.

Additional minor notes:

• Unclear citation for statement “These portfolios are typically structured around widely taught frameworks such as Design Thinking [23] or the previously mentioned Double Diamond, and tend to show a highly linear, standardized format.” In page 4
• No citation for “Gee’s Building Task of Language in page” 6
• In page 9, source 30 is cited together with peer reviewed articles although it’s a blog post and this is not identified in the writing.
• The references aren’t ordered alphabetically as per ACM formatThis one is jacked up. The format calls for ordering the citation list A-Z, which then makes the citation numbers not align with the sequence in which they are encountered in the paper. In addition to being really hard to make sense of while reading, it makes revision a giant pain in the ass.

Now does it contribute significantly to HCI? Enough as an argument as far as I am concerned.

Reviewer 3 What happened to 2? Who knows...

This short paper examines how the rise of design systems shapes creativity in the design profession, particularly in hiring junior designers. Drawing on interviews with sixteen 17 :( robust! senior design managers, the study finds that while designers are increasingly expected to produce standardized work within the bounds of design systems, hiring managers still often value and long for open-ended creativity that transcends these constraints.

This is a well-crafted and engaging short paper on a timely and focused topic. The motivation is clear and grounded in real tensions within design practice. The author effectively recruits a hard-to-reach population—senior design leaders—and the resulting insights feel both authentic and consequential. I'm glad the reviewer noted this; getting executives to give their time is generally impossible, and I appreciate the ease with which my network agreed to participate. The quotes are vivid, and the thematic synthesis is coherent and thoughtfully structured. Overall, the paper should be a valuable contribution for design practitioners reflecting on the creative limitations of design systems, and for educators considering how to foster creativity in design curricula. It is also a pleasure to read. Awww *blush*

I have a few revisions to suggest:

Clarify what design systems are.

A brief explanation of what a design system typically includes, along with one or two well-known examples (e.g., Google’s Material Design or IBM’s Carbon Design System), would help ground the discussion for readers less familiar with industry practice.

Offer more concrete examples creativity constraints

The piece does a nice job of capturing the sentiment of designers towards design systems. However, descriptions of how design systems constrain designers are mostly abstract, lacking concrete examples of what designer wish they could do differently or better without such limitations. Where/when did designers want to use a different UI element, font, color, etc.? Do design systems also constrain at other levels beyond visual design, e.g., identifying what the real user need or task is, what the flow should be?

Further discussion of exploratory vs. production design

The distinction between exploratory vs. production in the intro is helpful in framing the paper, although I concur with R4 that it could be better connected to existing HCI literature. Bill Buxton's work on the "getting the right design and getting the design right" comes to mind. He was one of the first people I engaged with at CHI, as he was taking the community to task for ignoring design (this was in 2002). Work by Amy Zhang and colleagues that is grounded in the double diamond model and explores the challenges of design system management and 'handing off' designs from exploration to production could also be relevant.

It's pretty clear how design systems shape production design. However, it's less clear to me how they affect exploratory design (e.g., understanding user needs, defining the design problem, determining process flows, early prototyping) that connect with the more open-ended creativity that parts of the paper lament is diminished due to design systems.

Bill Buxton. 2007. Sketching user experiences: Getting the design right and the right design. Morgan Kaufmann, Oxford, England. https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-12-374037-3.x5043-3

K. J. Kevin Feng, Tony W. Li, and Amy X. Zhang. 2023. Understanding collaborative practices and tools of professional UX practitioners in software organizations. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581273

Clarify the concluding statement.

I found the concluding statement somewhat abrupt and surprising: “educational programs that attempt to do both risk producing shallow hybrids.” This feels at odds with the study’s findings, which suggest that being able to operate within design systems is now a “table stakes” requirement for most roles, while creativity remains valued by many, especially in the hiring process. I need to work on this one, as it's the whole point of the work. Notes below.

Align section labeling with HCI conventions.

Referring to sections 2.1 and 2.2 as “themes” is slightly disorienting, since in HCI writing, themes typically appear in the Results section following a thematic analysis.

Clarify ambiguous phrasing.

In the sentence “The research examines how the compressed format of bootcamp programs may affect the type of skills students have, and the type of work they are prepared to show to prospective employers,” I at first found it unclear whether “the research” refers to this paper or to prior studies.

Reviewer 4

This work explores how creativity is considered within UX teams, particularly in large and medium-sized companies where efficiency and standardization dominate design practices.

First of all, I deeply resonated with this article because of my own experience as a manager-level UX designer in industry. I especially appreciated the part that states, “design work is expected to align closely with sprint cycles and product roadmaps [17]. Within this framework, design is rarely treated as a strategic activity that drives innovation.” I also found the focus on how portfolios are interpreted in the hiring process both sharp and compelling. It provides a vivid and critical angle into how creativity is valued or constrained within current UX hiring practices.

I am particularly grateful that the authors have brought the realities of design practice into academic discourse in such a lively and grounded way.

However, at this point, I cannot recommend direct acceptance. The paper still requires improvement in terms of academic writing quality and deeper engagement with prior HCI literature. 100% agree. The rewriting and revision would require a substantial amount of effort, likely beyond the R&R (revise and resubmit) period. No way! It's a good thing I like writing.

Rooms for Improvement

[Conceptual framing of creativity (Section 2)]

In the introduction of Section 2, the authors define “creativity.” However, the concept itself is very broad, and the definitions presented feel discrete rather than integrated. The authors do not sufficiently engage with the situated meanings of creativity or contextualize how it is understood within UX work. So, the authors could strengthen this section by engaging more deeply with how prior research has theorized creativity and by articulating how those existing perspectives inform the implications envisioned in this study. Completely fair, and pretty dumb miss on my part, considering I just finished the giant paper on creativity.

[The origin and articulation of “assembly production” (Section 2.1)]

The authors center the concept of “assembly production” in this paper. I am curious whether this concept is derived from [11]. When I checked [11], I could not find this exact notion in the cited literature. If the authors developed this concept themselves, they should elaborate more on how and why they define it, and how it is theoretically positioned in relation to prior work.

[On design systems and UX roles]

I strongly agree with the statement: “fluency in Figma, along with the ability to maintain visual consistency and follow system rules, are often prioritized in hiring and evaluation.”

However, I think the authors oversimplify the role of design systems. Design systems function as a grammar that helps maintain coherence in look and feel, but relying solely on them reduces the UX designer’s role too narrowly. A key part of UX designers’ work lies in identifying interaction issues and system flaws, and reflecting these insights back into the design system itself.

While their work may not always involve radical innovation, it is too hasty to generalize that they are simply “moving UI blocks in and out.” This is maybe the one piece of feedback I don't agree with, although I can certainly make it a lot clearer in the text; this was literally what the participants said. I believe it too, but it's not my words. As the authors themselves mention, “this version of creativity is incremental and detail-oriented, often invisible to those outside the team, and difficult to assess in hiring processes.” I completely agree with this, but such incremental creativity should not be dismissed as merely UI-level changes.

Even though the final outputs of UX/product design often manifest through interfaces, the meaning and decision-making behind these outcomes should not be minimized. Overemphasizing design systems risks overlooking the interpretive and problem-solving aspects of UX design. In practice, design systems define things like iconography, basic layout, and color or size conventions, not the interactions themselves. i think product design should not be just reduced to UI design.

[Presentation of findings]

In the introduction of the findings section, the authors summarize their results in bullet points. However, these are too abstract. It would be better to present them in paragraph form for clarity and narrative coherence. If efficiency is a concern, the authors could alternatively present the summary in a table rather than bullet points.

[Discussion and implications]

I found the discussion section particularly engaging. The authors touch on the contradiction in UX hiring, where managers expect deep engagement with design problems, but in practice, most work relies heavily on design systems. This contradiction raises important questions about where creativity can actually be exercised and how it is negotiated within real-world constraints. The authors briefly discuss implications for educational programs, which is valuable, but I would encourage them to extend the discussion further: How can creativity be interpreted and enacted under practical, systemic limitations? How does this connect to prior research on creativity in constrained or industrialized contexts? A deeper engagement with these questions would strengthen the contribution and situate the paper more firmly within ongoing HCI and design research conversations.