Overview
Over the summer of 2022, I worked as a UX Design Intern at the S&C Design System team. Specifically, I designed the end-to-end component usage dashboard and an example web app for testing. I also designed the data visualization components series and three mobile components. All of my work has been shipped either during or after my internship. It was truly a fruitful summer.
Note: everything showcased here is my individual work with great feedback from the team!
Duration
May 2022 - Aug 2022
Role
UX Design Intern
Tools & Methods
Figma, Atlassian Suite (Jira & Confluence), Interview, Survey
Timeline
How I (we) work & communicate: agile development.
Our team adopted the agile software development method where every two weeks is a sprint. During every sprint, I need to finish 1-3 tickets (tasks). Every day we would have a daily stand-up to share our progress and any potential obstacles. Every week, we have a design/dev review meeting where everybody presents their work and gives feedback. By the end of the sprint, we would have a sprint demo session where all interns will present their final results for this sprint. I also have a 1-on-1 with my mentor every week. I also scheduled meetings whenever I felt the need.
Work showcase
📊 Data Visualization Components
🧰 Example web app for testing bugs
📱Mobile components
Takeaways
This 12-week internship was truly a gift to me. I am so grateful for this opportunity and I learned a lot of skills during that time. Looking back, 12 weeks ran so fast but it made me a way better designer after this internship. And more importantly, I am more sure now that UX design is where my passion at, and I am ready for it!
What I did well
The quality of my design work: although it could always be better, I was quite happy about the deliverables I gave during my internship. During my mid-term reviews, my manager gave me the full mark for the quality of my work and specifically complimented it! I am very grateful and encouraged. It meant a lot to me!
Observing & learning from my team: by simply observing how my team works and communicates, I was able to learn a lot such as communication, giving & receiving feedback, and presentation. I also learned many Figma tricks and skills from my mentor, Ann, who is the Figma Guru of our team!
Research, a lot: I put a lot of effort into doing research of learning more about the problem, understanding the context, or simply learning the best practices instead of rushing into the design which I was always tempted to do. It really paid off and saved me a lot of time.
What could have been better
Getting feedback from the earlier stage: I always had the mindset that I should only show my work when it is very polished and thought out. Sometimes, this worked. Other times, it just didn’t. When it did not work, I had to do much extra work which could have been avoided if I had shown them the MVP of my design idea even if it looked ugly, and asked for feedback at the earlier stage.
Documentation: before this internship, I was more familiar with the Chinese way of the software development process which it is quick and dirty. We do not really have documentation or will only have minimum documentation after everything is finished. It was another UX design intern, Audrey, who showed me the power of documenting everything throughout the whole process. Since then, I documented many things but still not enough. Besides, since I was kind of new in this area, it took me more than average time to document things. I would focus on improving my documentation skills.
Communication tricks and skills: as mentioned earlier, I learned a lot and did well in this aspect. They are also many things I could improve upon such as the language/vocabulary to use during certain situations since English is not my first language. I also wish to improve upon my small talk skills since I was not familiar with small talk cultures as a Chinese.