[bsimpson]

I'm a UX Engineer at Google. The tasks we ask you to complete in an interview are very practical - sketching out the same kinds UIs that you might build in the real world.

The impractical part is that you'll probably be coding in a Google Doc rather than a text editor. It can be a bit disorienting.

I've also interviewed at Airbnb, where I was asked to code in Codepen for UI and in node for algorithms. I felt more comfortable in a more realistic coding environment, but one of their computers crashed mid-interview and the other's network access was broken. Coding in a doc and hand-waving when necessary is better than working in a more realistic environment if the hardware isn't reliable. (Realistic doesn't nec. mean unstable, but if you're expecting candidates to write working code in a fixed period of time, you need to make sure your communal interview machines are well-maintained.)