What I learned from my UX Design Internship at Kendra Scott — Career, Design and Accessibility
This summer (May to July, 2019), I worked as the UX design Intern at Kendra Scott. Kendra Scott is an American fashion and lifestyle brand that encompasses fashion jewelry, fine jewelry, home accessories, and nail lacquer. Scott founded Kendra Scott LLC in 2002, designing her first collection with $500 in the spare bedroom of her home just after her oldest son was born. Now, valued at over $1 billion, Kendra Scott opened more than 100 retail stores nationwide.
Through the Summer Internship, we had intern activities including department presentations, leadership lunch and networking events, where I had the opportunity to meet people from different departments. They talked about their daily roles, cross-team collaboration and career advices to young people. In this article, I will talk about what I’ve learned from this amazing opportunity.
Mentor & Mentee
Although you would be afraid, you are gonna do this. You will fail but it is part of the learning.
— Kendra Scott CFO, Tracey
Kendra Scott CFO, Tracey gave us insightful tips according to her experience as a mentee. The first suggestion is to always ask for the feedback. For each task we have done, it would be very helpful to ask what you did good and what didn’t. In this way, before you started working on the next task, you know where to improve.
The second suggestion is to speak up. Commonly, people in their early career usually hold back their opinions because they think they are new and they don’t have much power to speak up. However, the company hires young people because they think about things differently. It is the diversity of thoughts that makes a company thriving. Therefore, speak up. Don’t think that if you are new, it is inappropriate to speak up.
Tracey believes the chemistry naturally generated between people is important. She thinks the great mentor-mentee relationship is not one way but the mentee should also bring values to the mentor. Like you created and proposed something that your mentor found valuable or helpful. This would create a more natural mentor-mentee relationship. When she was a mentee, she appreciated that her mentor just pushed her into things. She said, although you would be afraid, you are gonna do this. You will fail but it is part of the learning.
Figure out what you like
Lon, the Chief Operating Officer at Kendra Scott, asked young people to not pay too much attention to the position but pay more attention to what they like or don’t like. In one position, there are different tasks to do. It is important to figure out what type of tasks you like. Then according to that, to find your suitable position.
Lon also mentioned that if you want to find help, you need to let me know How can I help? Where do you wanna improve?” He would love to help this kind of person more than person who don’t know what he/she wants. What Lon said made me realize that when searching for help, I need to present my needs in a clear and straightforward way.
Be yourself and find a suitable place
You can be affective in your own style.
— — Jonathan, the Vice President of Wholesale
Jonathan, the VP of Wholesale values people’s different styles. He said some people are fun and talkative while others are quiet and reserved. You can be affective in your own style. These words have inspired me so much that I am not uncomfortable to try to be another person any more. I could be myself and find a place that is suitable for me.
From Kirsten, the director of customer marketing and E-commerce, an internship is to figure out what drives you, what excites you. Find a place that when you come back from vacation, you still feel excited to work at. However, if you still want to be on vacation, it is not a good sign. Kirsten is a mom so I asked about her work-life balance. If you want to travel or spend 4 hours with your kids, you should find a job that suits all of these things.
She also talks about the difference between big company and small company. In a big company, most things have been set. If you say, “I wanna try this”, it’s gonna be very hard. But at Kendra Scott, She has the opportunity to trail lots of her ideas. Although there is some failures, we learn and do it differently next time, Kirsten said. She think it fun to work closely with different people and build that relationship. People can trust her cross-functionally at Kendra Scott.
Career Choices
If there are no new things to learn, you know that it is time to change.
— — Megan, the Vice President of E-commerce
From the VP of E-commerce, Megan, she said it is important to know when to make a change. She talked about her choices of going to a big company that everything is set versus a small and flexible company. For her at that time, she would like to start something new that she can take control of instead of following a pre-set pattern. She said if there are no new things to learn, you know that it is time to change.
Relationship
The relationship between people can be a big factor in working efficiency. Through the talk with the product manager, Pam, I learned about her daily roles as managing projects and other people’s tasks, which takes a lot of facilitation skills. She said she wanted to create a safe environment that everyone feels comfortable to talk about their own mistakes. Therefore, when things don’t go well, she can get the team together and work on the errors efficiently and collaboratively. In terms of her passion, she enjoys being the cheerleader of a project and making a difference in business. I was impressed by Pam’s cheerful mood and I know how hard it would be to spread the positive mood to others when there is difficulty.
Design and accessibility
My mentor, Stephanie provided me with valuable guidance in design as well as how to be a UX designer who advocates for users. In terms of her pursuit of UX design career, her passion is in problem-solving. She likes that user experience design is data-driven but also with creativity. When she was first hired at Kendra Scott, she did more visual staffs than the whole site experience. Then, she tried to speak for herself and users so that people started to realize the importance of user experience. Currently at Kendra Scott, the whole e-commerce team put a lot of emphasis on user experience. Although most of them are not UX designers, everyone actively gets involved in the discussion of user experience. I learned a lot from these discussions.
From Stephanie, I learned about presenting about my design proposal in a more professional way, how to better conduct user research and use A/B testing platform. When there is a problem to be solved. It is always good to come up with multiple options. Then through A/B testing or usability test, we could learn customers’ reactions to these options and if the change impacts the revenue. Designing based on the data is solid and efficient. However, we should not only look at the revenue metrics and ignore the user experience and emotions. Therefore, UX designer needs to know when to speak for users. Since Kendra Scott collaborates with different types of vendors, I also got chances to meet with them. I learned to communicate with them efficiently and raise good UX questions.
Through a one-on-one meeting, Stephanie and I also talked about accessibility in design. She walked me through the accessibility guideline in web design at Kendra Scott. I learned that 8.5% of the population has a disability that affects computer use. about WCAG (web content accessibility guidelines), ARIA(accessible rich internet applications), strategic alt text. Kendra Scott website allows users to enter accessibility mode, which ensures assistive users have a better and more accessible access to the same content and features.
Before, I thought it is good to have a very detailed alt text. Now I know that the text should be strategic and doesn’t include unnecessary content. For example, when there is already text on the page, the picture of the girl wearing jewelry doesn’t have to be read. Because it is decorative and repetitive. For people using voice-over, it is important to have a proper hierarchy of content and the ability to skip the main content.
In a fast-paced company environment, it is very easy to ignore accessibility. As a UX designer, we should always have accessibility in mind. It is our responsibility to bring up this topic and raise the whole company’s awareness of accessibility.
Job Hunting
Beside the Internship itself, we attended lots of event including one with interns and HR from Yeti, Outdoor voices and Bumble. We had the opportunity to learn from job hunting tips directly from HR.
Instead of applying to lots of jobs, only applying to the positions that you are passionate about will raise the success rate. Cover letter should make sense and answers HR’s confusion after reviewing the resume. One HR said I only read the cover letter when your resume doesn’t make sense. She likes seeing a variety on the resume. Candidates become more competitive if they have both experiences from big companies and start-ups.
It is also important to keep in touch. Kendra Scott HR mentioned a girl they met on a networking event. When the girl graduated from college, they received an email from the girl looking for a job opportunity. Although there is no available position, whenever they have one, they will think of this girl and notify her.
I truly appreciated the opportunity at Kendra Scott, where I learned much more than I expected. In this friendly and open environment, I met people from different departments and get inspired by them and the things they are doing. I had new insights on both career and life. Therefore, I would like to share my experience with more people. Thanks for reading!
If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to contact me at weiymeng@iu.edu
More about my work at www.weiyi-meng.com and find me on LinkedIn :)
