Rethinking Internship: 3-week journal as a product design intern, remotely

Designers are thinkers.

This #Rethinking series will be my reflection on what I have learned in my current master's studies in HCI. I will be citing a lot, reflecting tons or drawing inspirations from my classes or internship.

In this article, I want to talk about what goals I have for the Product Design Internship and how I intentionally arranged my learning. Basically, my current time arrangement for the internship is divvied up into five main categories: intake, output, ask questions, connect and reflect.

So, how is the remote internship so far?

As a Product Design Intern, my main job is to focus on a specific product and eventually contribute to a part of the design. So far, I enjoyed the whole experiences and really appreciated what the company has done for us to try the best to provide a virtual internship in a seamless way.

I always love to dismantle the elements of experience and to keep them in mind and learn in the future. From my experiences so far, it’s been a wonderful experiences. I think one key factor lies in creating transparent and encouraging communication channels that aid in building trust in the virtual environment. Another crucial foundation of this wonderfulness is perhaps the feeling of belonging to the team and being cared.

My goal in the internship

As everyone has suggested, it’s important to set goals before starting everything, and I am no exception. I think a goal is not only a benchmark to measure performance, but also serves as a northern star to keep me focused on the track.

Here are the goals I have set for myself when I started:

1. To become a more mature Product Designer with a holistic view about designing products
2. To learn more about how to collaborate with other stakeholders, engineers, product managers
3. If possible, I want to dig deeper with designing interaction in product

What is my current action?

30% Intake

In the first few weeks, I spent most of my time reading white papers and product notes aside from onboarding events or product meetings. Since my job is focused on designing one specific product, I feel imperative to delve deep in understanding the context of the product history, its stakeholders, its mission, and most important of all, its primary users.

If you have used Duo Mobile or read articles about Duo, you probably know that Duo’s mission is to provide security and trust for its users in the digital world. Thus, I also spent a lot of time understanding what is cybersecurity and the different products provided.

25% Output

While absorbing this new knowledge, I am also simultaneously doing the following:

Take notes and visualize information

With my pet peeve in organising thoughts and my background in liberal arts, I am used to taking notes while learning, which I found is a great way to learn new knowledge because I am creating a process of internalizing intake.

Over the past 2 years (yes, it’s only been exactly 2 years after I decided to transition my career without prior experiences at all), I have been exposed to innumerable amounts of information related to visualising everything: in storytelling, in presenting ideas, in showing works, and in explaining concepts. Thus, it’s become extremely natural for me to trying to create a visual version of the knowledge.

Design Tasks

As I won’t describe the details of my tasks, I will share my mentality as I handle the tasks. I focus on how designers do things and think, so, in my tasks, I am trying to advance my executions and planing of a project, which is what I am interested in growing.

20% Asking questions

One of the cultures at Duo is to ask questions, as many as you like. One of the previous interns, now a full-time, have shared that someone at Duo has said this while answering her question:

It’s our job to answer your questions.

The culture of supporting asking questions actually is related to some very important qualities in design thinking. First of all, it is Wabi-sabi, the concept of embracing imperfection and thus freeing us from the fear of failure. It is originated from Japan and I have also written an article encompassing this idea.

Rethinking the design mindset

Secondly, it is Psychological Safety. Psychological Safety refers to the degree of security we feel in a certain situation, which is associated with our mental comfortableness in exposing our imperfection to that situation too. So far, I feel like a nurturing environment ensuring growth is critical for a junior to achieve excellence.

High-Performing Teams Need Psychological Safety. Here's How to Create It

20% Connect

As I have previously explained in my internship hunting takeaway, knowing how to connect to others is a crucial part in shaping a more fulfilling career experience. With the act of connection, I keep myself ready for feedback to assess my current goals and strategy, which in fact embodies the process of iteration.

Although I am still learning, I found that the point of connecting to others should be focused on starting a natural conversation and getting to know each other, instead of only narrowing on getting helps. The transition of mindset really helps me inviting more senior professionals for coffee chats.

Also, I found connection has been given new meaning in this remote era. Now, people’s physical distance has been pulled apart but the default mode of meeting has become online, which almost eliminates the inconvenience of commute, traveling or arranging schedules. For some one like me who studies in a university town, it is definitely a great way to connect to people in different cities at the lowest cost possible.

5% Reflect

With the act of reflecting, I am actually getting myself into the habit of tracking growth and eager for growth. Growing up, I love to keep a journal for random thoughts or emotions. However, as digital devices start to take the place of note-taking and thought-storing, I gradually lost the habit to have something near me ready for my rattling and reflection.

Nevertheless, with the start of the internship, I decided to record my self-analysis in terms of three aspects and assess it weekly: what am I working on at the moment? What’s my current success? And what’s challenging me? Through this process, I want to build a platform to track my growth and become more confident in the process of learning. I wish that at the end of the internship, when I look back, I can see how I navigate through the challenges and conquer them.

I always believe designers are thinkers. So, I want to keep track of my growth and my thought as a reference for current and future reflection. I hope this piece of reflection can provide some fuels for your future tips. At the same time, I am all ears to all feedback. Let’s be thinkers and let’s think for growth.