I treat interviews more like going out for coffee and often do just that. I like to understand what people are passionate about both in tech and personally.
As for coffee - do you ask your interviewees if they want that? I don't drink coffee and generally hate coffee shops because the only other options are sugar and fat-filled starch bombs like scones and cakes, and other drinks I don't enjoy like tea. I usually eat a decent meal before interviews so I don't end up unable to think due to hunger during the technical part.
That said, I also find puzzles and unrealistic tests to be annoying. One thing I've done for the technical side is to pull questions from codereview.stackexchange.com and ask the candidate to review them. (I generally print it out and ask them to do it on paper in front of me, so they aren't looking at the existing answers.) This gives me a better idea of their technical skills without the "gotcha" feeling of whiteboards. It also normalizes for different background (e.g. I'm used to Xcode, but this interview had me working in Eclipse and I couldn't find anything!).
Often the interviews are over Skype, but we keep things pretty causal, and give the interviewee lots of opportunity to ask questions about the company and culture.
Cultural fit is very important to us. We live in Nelson, BC, small town Canada - very far away from Silicon Valley. Our team is very friendly and care for each other. We want to ensure any new hires contribute to that positive vibe.
Their choice of toolsets and setup can also be a really interesting discussion topic. More than once during an interview, someone has shown me something really cool that I adopted (new key binding, a new tool, a particular way someone had their terminals split-paned, etc).
But then...
"I like to understand what people are passionate about both in tech and personally."
OK, so what do people's personal passions have to do with what devs do every day? Are you really going to hire someone based on whether they prefer playing music, or bicycling, or spending time with their kids?
Also, since we have a limited amount of time for the interview, I'd much prefer that you didn't waste time asking me personal questions that are irrelevant to the job requirements (or telling me personal things about yourself). I'd rather have time to ask you questions about the job and the company.
How could you expect to measure the social impact of a new member on your team when you look at them as a technical robot and not a human being.
Probably because it's much easier to rank a algorithmic solution. The question of "does your code compute the correct answer in the allocated compute time" provides a nice clear answer. Solving business problems in elegant ways, on the other hand, takes a human to judge, and the results are not always clear.
The difference in the difficulty grading the two is exactly why the former is so popular as an interview technique (requires low effort to get a binary answer), and the latter is better at actually judging an applicant (reflects the human behind the test).
Surely you can add your own questions.
