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2022 UX Design Internship Program @ Haven Technologies
A ten week program that ran from June 2022 to August 2022. Included in this program were rotations (where an intern would rotate through different teams) and a capstone project.
The teams they could rotate on were the Direct New Business Team, Haven Design Systems, Operations, and Advisor New Business Team.
Haven Technologies
Clare Nguyen, UX Design Team
UX mentor, chapter lead
Leadership, Mentoring
March 2022 - August 2022
Background
In March 2022, my manager (Henry Agnew) asked if I interested in running the UX Design Internship. This was the first time the UX Design Team was able to have an internship program. It was a ten (10) week program that ran from June to August and we had three (3) interns who joined us for the summer.
I handled the recruiting, portfolio reviews, and mentored the interns throughout their program.
Results
Launched the UX Design Team's first-ever internship program, taking three interns through a 10-week summer program.
One intern's capstone feature shipped to production, and one intern received a full-time offer. The other two returned to school to finish their senior year.
The interns loved the program. Their main feedback was to have fewer rotations, since jumping between multiple teams was tough, which gave us a clear direction for improving future programs.
Creating the perfect program
When I began interviewing candidates, I went in with the mentality that just like we are interviewing them, they are also interviewing us. One of my questions was to ask them what they were hoping to get out of an internship. The answers I received included:
Experiencing how UX functions on a team
Having a project to display on their portfolio
Having a mentor to help guide them
Learning more about UX
Objective
Based off of the candidate feedback, I tailored the internship to include:
Rotations on different teams, where the intern would be able to shadow a full-time designer
A capstone project to showcase on their portfolio, where they work on a real feature for a team under the mentorship of that team’s designer
Workshops conducted by non-mentor designers to teach them topics they’d like to learn more about (for example: UX writing, Figma 101, Accessibility, and more)
My goal for this internship was to give students an opportunity to experience the day-to-day responsibilities of a full-time UX designer, while also teaching them the ropes of building thoughtfully, creatively, and accessibly.
I wanted to set our interns up for future success. What they learned here would teach them the right habits to practice through school and take into their careers.
Creating materials
To make sure that all UX designers and interns knew what to expect over the next ten weeks, I created documentation for them to reference and/or learn from. This included:
Overview of the program
Overview of capstone projects
Introduction to Design at Haven Technologies
Other educational materials were:
UX Workshop: Competitive Analysis
Case Studies and How to Write Them
Results
The internship went without a hitch! After the program was complete, I conducted a review & retro with the UX Design Team. The questions I asked them to think about were:
Were UX designers pulled into the internship too early or too late?
How involved would you want to be in the future?
What did you like about the internship?
What did you NOT like about the internship?
What were your thoughts on the structure of the internship?
Is there anything you would have liked to see?
What can we do to improve next year’s program?
The feedback I received from the team was incredibly helpful and let me know what parts of the program worked and which ones could be improved upon.
Conclusion
Overall, I’m incredibly pleased with how the internship went – especially because it was the first time the UX Design Team got to have interns!
If I could do it differently, I would have only done two rotations for the interns, rather than three rotations. The duration of the rotations were only 3 weeks, which meant that they would get introduced, settled, and then be moved to a new project. With two rotations they could start on one team for the first half of their program, then rotate to a second team for the second half.
I would have also had more clarity on which UX designers had the capacity to mentor and included ALL of them in the recruitment process – at least for transparency and visibility purposes.
It was a fantastic learning opportunity and taught me that I really enjoy mentoring and teaching.