I like this idea of interviewing by talking about interests and things worked on, though it's complicated, and I can't claim to have figured it all out. A few thoughts...
I used to interview people by looking at their resume, and starting asking curiosity questions about things they worked on, and going from there. I didn't have anything in particular I was looking for, just a vague sense from how they talked about it.
That's more complicated when organizations want to avoid the appearance of IP taint, so, it'd help if they had a side project/interest to talk about. But I'm not assuming everyone has time for that. Also, they might be slammed by work, and in project mental space they can't talk about, and temporarily skewing the impression they give about their curiosity about other things.
What's really unfortunate is all the formulaic, going-through-the-motions interviews these days. We used to make fun of the practice of hiring based on firmness of handshake, how well you dressed, and ridiculous standard interview behavioral questions that might as well be shibboleths for the people who prep for them. Now most young developers are told to prep for conveying culture fit, and answering particular kinds of CS101 coding questions/hazing, which seems to be much the same thing.
That said, though I think I can do better at finding great people than that, I still need to remember to add a big dose of humility, to the idea that I can get a sense of a person as an engineer, just by talking with them. I believe I can do a pretty good job of that, with some conscious uncertainty, and I'm self-aware enough not to simply hire people in my own self image. But of course I surely have more biases than I know, and there's a lot unknowns, and our practice is not science. So I should add in extra humility than I'd naturally have about this, and find the right balance between vision of what I think is needed, and being open to seeing things I didn't already see.
I also need to recognize that I'll have people coming to interview, having read the "Cracking the Interviews of FAANGs and All the Other Companies Who Act Like Stodgy Fortune 500 Hiring Large Numbers of Commodity Brogrammers" prep books, and probably seen that in some/most of their other interviews. :) And if someone shows up expecting the current usual rituals, I shouldn't hold it against them, but rather, it's my responsibility to communicate that I'd like to try to do this a bit differently.
One fear is that I'll explicitly tell people I'm looking to do this "genuine", and some will interpret that as an empty platitude or conceit, in interview prep book behavioral right answer terms. :)