AI CAN FAKE YOUR PORTFOLIO. IT CAN'T FAKE THE SECOND QUESTION

Summary from the TLDR Design newsletter

AI has made polished portfolios, case studies, and take-home assignments easy to generate, shifting the real proof of a designer's ability from artifacts to live conversations where they must explain, defend, and reflect on their decisions under pressure. Future interviews will increasingly focus on these "room tests," which reveal judgment, trade-off thinking, and experience through unscripted follow-up questions rather than polished presentations. The solution isn't to perfect portfolios but to regularly practice articulating decisions, discussing failures, and defending work in real time, because those skills are becoming the strongest signal of genuine expertise.