UX Design Internship

a program designed to enhance the intern’s design and research skills, build their network, and accelerate their opportunity to make an impact

Overview 💥

User focus: UX Design Intern (college student)

Involvement: conducted research, created an internship file with resources, schedule, and information the intern would need

Time: Spring 2022

Status: Piloting this summer (May 2022)

Summary: I’m really passionate about helping students, specifically those from marginalized communities, get into the tech industry and gain experience and knowledge. When I found out that my team was hiring our first UX Design Intern, I jumped at the opportunity to design and develop a program that would give them industry experience, and networking opportunities, and help build their portfolio and skillsets. Together with the GBU UX team managers, I was able to develop an internship program.

 

The Program 📝

The intern joining us would have the unique opportunity to work with 3 core teams, Research, Design Ops, and UX Consulting. I wanted to make sure that they got all that experience but also ended up with a project that can demonstrate what they’ve learned. I put together a Figma file that would act as a guide for the duration of the internship.

Key elements that were important:

  • Having a mentor that’ll help facilitate career-related discussions

  • Having a buddy from each team that’ll show them the ropes

  • Connecting them to other interns across Oracle

  • Giving them the opportunity to meet with Design Leads

  • Experiencing all the different areas of UX (Research, Design Ops, UX Design Consulting)

  • Having them work on a real project that would go into their portfolio

  • Help them learn new design and research skills

  • Give them access to all the resources they need in a timely manner

 

Sections within the Figma File:

  • Welcome page with notes from the team

  • Internship Overview – an overview of the design internship, what you be doing, what we expect, what you’ll get

  • Meet the team – overview of the three different teams, your mentor, your buddies

    • Information about the three different teams, meetings, expectations, and a day in the life

  • Design Process – an overview of our design process how our teams implement it, and examples of projects

  • Schedule – an interactive schedule that outlines the high-level goals for each week

  • Reflection & Goals – place where you can reflect on your experience and set personal and professional goals

  • Resources – Different resources like Design Process, Employee Resources Groups you can join, slack channels... etc

 

Here are some of the pages within the figma file ⤵️

Reflection 🔎

Designing and developing this internship program was definitely really exciting. It taught me a lot about organization, simplifying, and finding the balance between too much information and too little information. It was challenging trying to organize the information in a way that made it easy to digest. My goal in designing this internship is to make sure that the intern feels empowered and comfortable asking questions and working on their project. I wanted to make sure that they not only got the experience and a project on their portfolio but were also able to explore different paths within the design industry. It’s definitely been a fulfilling project to work on because I’ve always been passionate about helping students specifically those from a minority background.

I’m excited to see how the internship goes this summer and get feedback from the intern and team on how to improve it for next year!