"Learn by doing": UMSI student shares advice and takeaways from internship

Fisola Famuyiwa is a second-year student in the University of Michigan School of Information's Master of Science in Information program. She wrote an essay for Medium about her experience as a product design internship earlier this year.

Hi! I’m Fisola, and I was a product design intern at Nutshell this winter/spring. I wanted to share with you my cool experience working while being a grad student at University of Michigan’s School of Information master’s program.

Over the past 18 weeks I worked with two other product designers.

What is a product designer? 

While this position may vary across different companies, I have learned that a Nutshell product designer is responsible for:

• Research: In order to advocate for users, you have to first listen to them.
• Copywriting: More difficult than expected! It is important to carry a consistent tone of voice throughout your product.
• Business strategy: You are continuously striving to balance user needs with business goals.
• Interaction, user experience (UX), and user interface (UI) design (there is a difference!): It’s easy to get caught up in the aesthetics of UI, but it’s the user experience and interaction design that are the most important drivers of change and innovation.

5 key elements in the mix

1. Mentorship

It’s easy to forget that you should also be interviewing your interviewer to see if you’re a good match. My mentor, Madi, is the reason why I felt like I had room to personally and professionally grow throughout my internship. During my first interview all the way through the fifth round of interviews (yes, five!), I felt that she matched my energy and enthusiasm for design.

I still remember a question my mentor asked me: “Are you a starter or a finisher?”

I recognized that I was a strong starter and embraced my weakness as a finisher. I soon learned that there is power within the Crazy 8’s method, and you just need to jot something down on paper to hold you through the next few steps of the design process.

2. Navigating ambiguity 

Industry is very, very different from the academic setting. Think fewer words/papers and more pictures; images and direct quotes from users are more convincing when defending your designs.

There are so many unknown variables that product designers have to work around. This could be identifying new versus old business goals, focusing on growth versus retention, or implementing new design conventions versus retaining existing ones which users are already familiar with.

3. Don't be shy, ask for help

This ties into whether you and your mentor or team are a good match.

• No question is a dumb question.
• You can easily make uninformed design decisions if you don’t ask.

When I first started out, I was so shy and struggled to find my voice during design review meetings and such. Over time, I learned that my questions were not only helpful to me but also helpful to my team when brainstorming.

4. Feedback, feedback and more feedback

• Ask for specific feedback.

If you just show your work without saying what kind of feedback you are looking for, then it’s hard for your team to guide you and it’s difficult to make concrete improvements.

• Don’t just jump into high-fi prototyping; lo-fi prototyping is useful when trying to draw attention to specific elements and concepts.
• Ask for feedback at all stages, even on quick doodles.

5. Becoming a storyteller

It takes a village to raise a product.

You can’t tell a user’s story/journey without collecting and reviewing multiple perspectives.

This can be from direct user research to asking customer service what issues they’ve heard to engineers explaining what design solutions they’ve implemented in the past.

I highly recommend Jake Knapp’s book, Sprint, and AJ&Smart’s Design Sprint 2.0 version on YouTube.

To sum things up

Growth ... 

• I got better at recognizing and implementing pre-existing design conventions (and establishing a design system will save your life!).
• I learned to speak many “languages” while collaborating with other designers, software engineers ( “components”), stakeholders (“OKRs” and “MRR”), and users.
• I learned how to advocate for myself and become a design warrior!

Advice for beginners ... 

• Books, articles, YouTube, and other companies’ knowledge bases/design systems are your friend.
• You can only truly learn the trade by doing!

Within my first two weeks, I was able to conduct a complete heuristic evaluation based on NNG principles and successfully suggest and implement design improvements to Nutshell’s platform.

• By carrying out your designs, there is a sense of accomplishment and pride that motivates you to keep going.

While I began my internship as a “starter,” through constant feedback and encouragement I learned to become a “finisher.”

— Fisola Famuyiwa, Master of Science in Information student.

 

This article originally appeared on Medium and has been reposted with permission from the author.