What is the expectation of an interviewer at Microsoft when they say 'I'm not looking for efficient code' ?

I had virtual onsite at Microsoft and in 2 rounds interviewers said "I'm not looking for code"
Round 1 - Sort elements in array and interviewer said I can use inbuild sort method.
Round 2 - Reverse a string in place.

Both the interviewers hinted that they are looking for design. What design exactly they are looking for ?
These questions are so simple to code that I got confused about what they actually want from this interview.

Both the interview rounds were taken by two different principal software engineers at Microsoft