Creating a Whiteboard Question

Overview

Modern system design interviews usually start with the interviewer drawing a basic architecture on the virtual whiteboard and asking the candidate to improve it. It is a mundane effort for the interviewer to set up the basic design every time. We now have an option to create and save Whiteboard Questions to your question library. You can use these questions in tests and interviews, thus saving a lot of time and standardizing your system design interview experience. This article will dive into how you can create your whiteboard question. 

Create a Whiteboard Question

1. Click Create Question on the Library tab of the Home page.
2. Select Whiteboard from the question types.
3. There are two steps in creating a Whiteboard Question:

Step1: Question Details

Problem Details

• Question Name: The problem name should be short and topical. It should not give any hints to solve the problem.
• Problem Description: While describing the problem statement, ensure the question is clear and detailed. You can also use tables, graphs, or attachments to enhance clarity.

Question Properties

• Under the Question properties, you can set the score you want for the question.
• You can specify the total score you want to allot to a particular question here. If the question has more than one correct answer, each correct answer will get an equal fraction of the total score. This is a mandatory field.

• Assign the Recommended Time to answer the question.
• Associate it with the relevant tags. Tags are words or phrases that help with the searchability and organization of your questions. You can add the existing tags or create new tags. Set the difficulty level for your Question by associating the tags as Easy, Medium, or Hard. Alternatively, associate custom tags with identifying your question by complexity or level.
• Select the Skills you want to assess using this question.   

Interviewer Guidelines

• Interviewer Guidelines are for later reference. You can include a rubric about scoring the questions or write solutions to the problems in this section. These can be used by your team while evaluating the test. This step is optional.

 Note: Interviewer Guidelines are only visible to your team and you.

• Click Next for the next step.

Step 2: Whiteboard Settings

• In the Whiteboard Settings tab, you can draw the basic system design required for the interview.
• You can also insert images that are needed for the question.
• Click Save Question to save the question in the library.

Candidate Preview

• Once you are done with the question creation process, you can preview the candidate experience by clicking on See Candidate Preview.
• The candidate preview will be visible on the right pane of your screen. 
• 

Using a Whiteboard Question in an Interview  

• Click on the “+” icon in the interview and select the Import Question from the drop-down menu to add the whiteboard questions from your library.
• Click on the Import button to import the desired whiteboard question in the interview.
• Whiteboard question is imported into the interview.

Using a Whiteboard Question in Test 

• Select the question from the library and click on the Add To Test option.
• You can add that question to either a new test by selecting the Create a New Test option or any other existing test created by you.

Note: All the designs you create on the whiteboard are in blue by default to differentiate the problem and the solution.