3 Things I Learned From My 3 UX Research Internships This Year
I was recently asked by a peer, who I was helping land a UX Research internship, what has prepared me most for a career in UX Research. Her question stumped me a little. I think a year ago, the obvious answer (and my only answer) would have been something along the lines of what I learned in school. I definitely don’t want to minimize the importance of a strong academic research background, but applying those skills into an industry position is so crucial for individuals who want to eventually work in industry.
Have you ever heard of the saying that the best way to learn a foreign language is to immerse yourself in that country? If you want to learn how to be a UX Researcher, do your best to immerse yourself in an industry environment. I have been very lucky to have been able to have 3 internships in the last year and in this article, I give a brief overview of what I did at each stop, and ultimately my 3 key takeaways of what I learned from those internships, that hopefully will help other prospective UX Researchers looking for an internship.
Note: I realize we’re living in the time of COVID, so I want to be sensitive to that. I know it may be difficult to find an internship right now. If you need additional help applying for internships or need someone to look over your portfolio, please reach out to me and I will do my best to help! If you have the bandwidth, I recommend partnering with small businesses and providing them UX help, as this will be mutually beneficial during this time. Organizations such as National Assignment help to connect students with small local businesses to help with their business needs (web design, getting business online, etc.). Project work like this helped me land my first internship and gives a lot of hands-on experience tackling problems in UX.
My Internship Experience:
GE Appliances (Sept 2019-June 2020, 10 months)
My final year of grad school started with an internship at GE Appliances as a UX Research / Human Factors intern. Here, I was able to apply what I learned in grad school to an industry position and I had the opportunity to serve as the UX lead for many consumer appliances (e.g., microwaves, electric ranges, wall ovens, and more). My research here revolved around mainly quantitative studies, where I ran benchmark and A/B tests on many of our current and future products. We collected metrics, such as time on task, pass/fail, subjective usability, and the like. I also performed heuristic evaluations on a lot of our mobile apps and ergonomic evaluations on digital prototypes.
I really enjoyed my time at GE, but I felt that I was lacking more of the “user research” side of my internship. Although I was running a lot of tests and evaluations, I didn’t have a lot of in-depth experience with interviewing and talking to our users. Our organizations used segmentations to understand user groups, but primarily that research was done by the Consumer Insights wing of the organization. As a result, I decided to pursue another internship that would give me that experience.
IBM, Marketing (June 2020-August 2020, 3 months)
That led me to IBM where I interned in the marketing department this past summer. Here, I was finally able to get more qualitative research experience, and I worked on a project that (1) created personas for the roles of some of our IBM employees and (2) evaluate the design of a sales software that our organization uses. For this, I conducted in-depth interviews to understand my user groups. Knowing how heavily personas are used from my previous organization, I was very proud to have developed these personas for the marketing organization so that they can be leveraged in the future for the development of new sales software.
In this role, I learned that I really liked working in software and performing qualitative studies. If you enjoy UX Research, chances are, you enjoy talking to users. That was the best part of the internship for me, getting to talk to actual users and understanding more of the pain points they have with their role and our tools. In addition, working with software has been rewarding, as I experienced such a quick turnaround in seeing my recommendations get implemented into the software. I remember checking back with the tool a couple weeks after I gave my final presentation to the team, and saw multiple of my recommendations implemented in August! I hope as the months go by, I am able to see more of those recommendations implemented.
IBM, Cloud and Data Platform (August 2020-present)
Most recently, I have joined the Cloud and Data Platform User Research team at IBM where I am able to continue building my UX Research experience. Previously, during my internships, my team has been very small, either just my manager and me, or my manager, another intern and me, but within Cloud and Data Platform, an organization of approximately 70 researchers, I have been able to learn so much from the other researchers. In my first two projects, I am going to be using two new methods (complexity analysis and common industry format (cif) test). I am excited to see where this internship takes me and to be able to keep learning new methods in order to strengthen my skillsets even further.
3 Key Takeaways from my Internships:
1. Embrace the Uncomfortable
At times during all of my internships, I felt in over my head. Looking back, I think those uncomfortable moments helped me grow so much as a researcher. Coming from an academic background, I had a very “stick to the script” mentality. It was definitely hard for me to answer questions at first that didn’t have a specific answer in an academic journal, or use a survey that wasn’t heavily validated (“I can just ask whatever I want in a survey? I don’t have to use the NASA-TLX to measure workload?”). It made it very difficult, as a result, to perform qualitative research when I first came to IBM. Since my educational background and first internship revolved around quantitative measures, I doubted myself at times and thought, was I was doing the “right thing?” I don’t think I realized until I was looking at the list of insights that were uncovered and the design recommendations that I made, did I realize that I did a good job with the study. The icing on the cake was then seeing how appreciative my stakeholders were with my help in making the product better for other IBMers.
I think while you’re young in your career, internships give you the opportunity to master different domains. At no other time in your career will you be able to work in a company that focuses on consumer appliances and then employee management software and then cloud integration services, all in one year! Every time I have completed an internship, I have learned so much. I realize that this is not sustainable long term, as you can’t do the same as a full-time employee, but as an intern, I recommend taking advantage of this unique opportunity as much as you can.
2. Interning is like Dating (Kinda)
During all my internships, I’ve been able to learn so much about what I ultimately want in a full-time employer, work environment and manager. Like I previously said, I now know that I definitely want to work in software and that I love conducting qualitative studies. I also have “deal breakers” when I am looking for jobs. For example, in terms of work environment, I will not be on a team where I am the sole UX researcher, as I really enjoy collaborating with others and learning from incredibly smart people. It is also important to consider your stance on other things, like working from home, if that is important to you. Is the company accommodating if you need to work from home? Will the company trust you to do your work even if you’re not in the office?
The ethics of a company is also important to me. Are they committed to being an inclusive workplace? Do they have a good reputation for treating their employees well? I don’t want to have to be embarrassed when someone asks me where I work. I want to be proud of the company I work for and their dedication to making the world a better place, through their products and their actions. I was particularly proud when I found out that IBM invested $100M and announced its first @IBM Quantum education and research initiative for HBCUs to help drive a diverse and inclusive Quantum workforce. Something I learned while I’ve been interning is that company ethics are very important to me.
Lastly, in graduate school, I was told in looking for a graduate human factors program, to make sure you also consider your advisor, as you will be working with them very closely. I feel the same way about a manager. I’ve had a lot of great managers over the past year, so I feel very lucky that I have yet to have a “bad manager” experience. In having great managers, I realized that I want a manager that will keep my best interests at heart and will be a mentor to me. I don’t like to be micromanaged, and I definitely want a manager that will give me feedback about how I’m doing in my role. When you are interviewing for internships, don’t be afraid to interview your manager as well, by asking him/her about their management style.
3. Network & Be Your Authentic Self
One thing that has really impressed me is how open everyone I’ve met has been with helping me and my career. Short term, I’ve gotten a lot of great feedback on things I can do to help me get the most out of my internship. At GE, when I was interested in learning more about our factories operate, I was encouraged to take a week out of my internship to work in the factory and see how our lines operate. It definitely gave me an appreciation for everything that happens behind the scenes, and all the people that work together to make the appliances that ultimately go into someone’s home. Long term, I’ve had mentors help me land other internships and provide me with career advice. Aside from my managers, I have also received a lot of great mentorship by networking and reaching out to other UX professionals. At IBM, I reached out to other UX Researchers for quick coffee chats, to learn more about their role and IBM. I even was able to meet a Texas Tech Alumni who graduated from the human factors program approximately 30 years before me!
Everyone has their own strengths, weaknesses, and their own perspectives on UX Research. That’s what I enjoy so much about working on a team; everyone is able to use their strengths to help the team as much as they can. I not only have had the opportunity to work with project managers, designers, and engineers, but also with many UX Researchers with various backgrounds. I personally didn’t know how many different areas of expertise a UX Researcher can come from. I have worked with researchers who are educated in typical fields like human factors and human-computer interaction, but I have also worked with UX researchers who are cognitive psychologists, data scientists, computer scientists, and more. Each one has a place in UX and is able to bring something special to the team.
I want to end by saying, you don’t know everything and that’s okay. One of the things I really struggled with was imposter syndrome during the beginning of all of my internships, where I felt like I didn’t belong or I didn’t deserve my current internship. I think once I realized that it’s okay not to know everything, then I felt more comfortable in my internships. You’re not expected to come in being an expert in cloud, data & AI, but that’s okay, so don’t be afraid to ask questions. Your skills in research are what is most important for the job, and the expertise in your domain will come in time. You’re smarter than you think you are!
Lastly, I want to thank everyone who has helped me. Like I said previously, I have had a lot of great managers in the past. My first research PI in undergrad, Robert Proctor, has helped me along every step of the way, from applying to school, until now. I feel so lucky that I was able to get my first human factors exposure from a distinguished fellow in the field. Additionally, Russ Grant from GE and Brian Utesch, Jake Volz, and Tracy McGoldrick from IBM have all shown me what a great manager looks like. I hope to one day pull from my experience working with them and apply them to my own team in the future.
Special thanks to Tracy McGoldrick, Milika Powell, and Maranda Bodas for providing feedback on this article.
Theresa Nguyen is a UX Research Intern at IBM based in Houston, Texas. The above article is personal and does not necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.
