From Scratch to Sketch: My Past 3 Months Experience
Intro
In this summer break, I got a chance to be an intern at CICIL for 3 months as a UI/UX Designer. My journey to get an intern, especially in the UI/UX field wasn’t easy. I had zero working experience and my portfolio wasn’t that fascinating at the time. I almost gave up on product design but thankfully, after months of internship hunting and rejections, I got the offer from CICIL.
How I Adapt
I could say my prior experience in the UI/UX field was still limited, especially in the UI as I spent more time in the research rather than design. I was only familiar with one design and prototyping tool, which was Figma and had no experience in using other tools, such as Sketch, AI, AdobeXD, and Marvel. At that time, I was told that CICIL designers used Sketch as its main tool and I tried using it long before the internship started.
The Journey
On the first day of the internship, I got a task from my mentor, Kak Jessica to explore and getting used to CICIL website. I analyzed the flows and was asked to choose one that I thought wasn’t efficient enough. I chose tuition checkout flow and simplified the flow as well as modified the UI. I wasn’t involved in the real project yet, but this process had taught me to implement design thinking to current existing design. At the end of the day, Kak Jessica gave me feedback and improvements regarding the new design I made.
My first impression of internship at CICIL formed on this first day and it was enjoyable. I started to like what I do on the first day. The people and the environment was new for me but I could tell I was going to love this whole internship experience at CICIL.
Most of my work consisted of designing the UI, but other than that, I got the chance to learn more about UI/UX. By the chance to learn more, I mean not just learning by doing, but also learning from the qualified resources, such as books. Me and my two other intern friends, Via and Oji were each asked by our mentors to choose and read a book about UI/UX and then present it to the whole UI/UX team.
I chose a book that is focused on the UI, titled “Designing with the Mind in Mind” by Jeff Johnson. This book tells about design guidelines to understand user interface. The reason why I chose this book was because Via and Oji had chosen books focusing more on the UX so I thought I would just complement the sharing session by presenting the topic about UI. Other than that, I had been reading articles about UX pretty much so I thought I would give it a try on the UI. UI is commonly learned by doing, such as designing. By reading materials about UI, it would give me an in-depth insights from the human aspect.
The biggest and my most favorite work at CICIL was doing user research. I was asked to be in charge to do exploratory research about credit limit. I determined the method that would be used which were user interview and playing cards. Those methods were chosen because credit limit is a pretty complex concept to be implemented and user’s understanding about it had to be examined individually. My team and I also listed the questions to be asked and set the playing cards requirements and rules based on CICIL’s credit limit gamification.
I was paired with Via to do the research in Palembang. We did the research without the guidance of the other full-time from Jakarta, but we were accompanied by the campus coordinator in Palembang. I was kinda nervous to do this all by ourselves without guidance and was afraid if something went wrong. Thankfully, everything went as planned though there were little challenges along the way. We researched 5 users there and we gained so many insights from them. The insights varied, especially if compared to other cities, such as Yogyakarta and Jakarta where we held the research in as well. My overall research experience was so interesting because I think not everyone would be given this kind of opportunity while they’re still an intern.
Last, but not Least
I learned so much from this internship, either the technical and soft skills. From my point of view, my growth has been exceptional in terms of my skills since I got to be introduced into real projects at a real company. I’m glad that I get this opportunity as I also met many amazing people who are not only helpful, but fun to talk to as well.
