Coding tasks in tech interviews

As someone mentioned on Quora, doing a regular interview is not as effective as solving a problem. There is a lot of information that a good interview can get from how a candidate approaches the task, how they clarify the requirements, how they react to a feedback / corrections, how they deal with ambiguity, etc. Unfortunately, some companies just ask to solve a coding problem and only evaluate the result as "yes / no", or in the best case, as a 3-category outcome: optimal solution / naive solution / no solution. So it's up to an interviewer and a company how to get the most information about the candidate from the coding or a design task. And candidates can also make conclusions about the interviewer and the company, especially if they get multiple offers that they can choose from ...

while I do understand how annoying coding exercises can be, especially for senior / lead / PM roles, but there is still no better way to verify basic CS fundamentals what would you suggest? Just rely on credentials / prior work history and assume that an SDE III from Amazon with 10 years of experience knows what to do? Or offer another type of logic challenge i.e. a fischer chess game? :)

No, really, why?